
Class .T^JAii^ 
Book _l/1_| 



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17 



THE AUTOCRAT 



OF THK 



BREAKFAST-TABLE 



THE 



A U T O C R 




OP TUB 



BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



EVRRT MAS BIS OWN BOSWELL. 



BOSTON : 
T I C K X O R AND FIELDS 

M DCCC LX \ III. 



/^< 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by 

Oliver Wendell Holme?, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 




THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 



The interruption referred to in the hrst sen- 
tence of the first of these papers was just a 
quarter of a century in duration. 

Two articles entitled '' The Autocrat of the 
Breakfast-Table" will be found in the '* New 
England Magazine," formerly published in Bos- 
ton by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date 
of the first of these articles is November 1831, 
and that of the second February 1832. When 
" The Atlantic Monthly " was begun, twenty- 
five years afterwards, and the author was asked 
to write for it, the recollection of these crude 
products of his uncombed literary boyhood 
suggested the thought that it would be a cu- 
rious experiment to shake the same bough 
again, and see if the ripe fruit were better 01 
worse than the early windfalls. 

So began this series of papers, which nat- 
urally brings those earlier attempts to my own 
notice and that of some few friends who were 



vi THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

idle enough, to read them at the time of their 
publication. The man is father to the boy 
tlriat was, and I am my own son, as it seems 
'.to me, in those papers of the New England 
Magazine. If I find it hard to pardon the 
boy's fauks, others would find it harder. They 
will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as I 
hope, anywhere. 

But a sentence or two from them will perhaps 
bear reproducing, and with these I trust the 
gentle reader, if that kind being still breathes, 
will be contented. 

— " It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, 
when you find yourself felicitous, take notes of your 
own conversation." 

— " When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down 
my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beau- 
tiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the 
gems efFedlively, but their fhape and lufl:re have been 
given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the fineft fim- 
ile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I 
will (how you a fingle word which conveys a more pro- 
found, a more accurate, and a more eloquent analogy." — 

— " Once on a time, a notion was flarted, that if all 
the people in the world would fhout at once, it might 
be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it 
fhould be done in juft ten years. Some thousand fhip- 
loads of chronometers were diftributed to the seleClmen 
and other great folks of all the different nations. For 
a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the 



THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. vii 

awful noise that was to be made on the great occafion. 
When the time came, everybody had their ears so wide 
open, to hear the universal ejaculation of Boo, — the 
word agreed upon, — that nobody spoke except a deaf 
man in one of the f^jee Islands, and a woman in 
Pekin, so that the world was never so ftill fince the 
creation." 

There was notliing better than these things 
and there was not a little that was much worse. 
A young fellow of two or three and twenty has 
as good a right to spoil a magazine-full of 
essays In learning how to write, as an oculist 
like Wenzel had to spoil his hat-full of eyes 
in learning how to operate for cataract, or an 
elegant like Brummel to point to an armtul of 
failures in the attempt to achieve a perfect tie. 
This son of mine, whom I have not seen for 
these twenty-five years, generously counted, 
was a self-willed youth, always too ready to 
utter his unchastised fancies. He, like too 
many American young people, got the spur 
when he should have had the rein. He there- 
fore helped to fill the market with that unripe 
fruit which his father says in one of these pa. 
pers abounds in the marts of his native country. 
All these by-gone shortcomings he would hope 
are forgiven, did he not feel sure that very few 
of his readers know anything about them. In 
taking the old name for the new papers, he felt 




viii THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

bound to say that he had uttered unwise things 

under that title, and if it shall appear that his 

unwisdom has not diminished by at least half 

while his years have doubled, he promises not 

to repeat the experiment if he should live to 

double them again and become his own grand- 

tather 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

Boston iVoo;. ist 1858. 




THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 






>v; 



I WAS just going to say, when I was intcrmpted, 
that one of the many ways of classifying minds is 
under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical in- 
tellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an 
extension or variation of the following arithmetical 
formula: 2-}-2z=4. Every philosophical proposition 
has the more general character of the expression 
a \-b=^c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and 
egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of 
figures. 

They all stared. There is a divinity student lately 
come among us to whom I commonly address re- 
marks like the above, allowing him to take a certain 
share in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent 
questions are involved. He abused his liberty on 
this occasion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had 
the same observation. — No, sir, I replied, he has not. 



2 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

But he said a mighty good thing about mathematics, 
that sounds something like it, and you found it, not 
in the original, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. ] 
will tell the company what he did say, one of these 
days. 

If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration ? 

— I blush to say that I do not at this present moment, 
I once did, however. It was the first association to 
which I ever heard the term applied ; a body of 
scientific young men in a great foreign city who ad- 
mired their teacher, and to some extent each other. 
Many of them deserved it; they have become famous 
since. It amuses me to hear the talk of one of those 
beings described by Thackeray — 

" Letters four do form his name ** — 

about a social development which belongs to the very 
noblest stage of civilization. All generous companies 
of artists, authors, philanthropists, men of science, 
are, or ought to be. Societies of Mutual Admiration, 
A man of genius, or any kind of superiority, is not 
debarred from admiring the same quality in another, 
nor the other from returning his admiration. They 
may even associate together and continue to think 
highly of each other. And so of a dozen such men, 
if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so many. 
The being referred to above assumes several false 
premises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate 
each other. Secondly, that intini^te knowledge oi 



y 




THE OLD GENTLEMAN OPPOSITE. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BkEAKFAST-TABLE. 3 

habitual association destroys our admiration of 
persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance. 
Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet 
together to dine and have a good time, have*signed 
a constitutional compact to glorify themselves and to 
put down him and the fraction of the human race 
not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is 
an outrage that he is not asked to join them. 

Here the company laughed a good deal, and the 
old gentleman who sits opposite said, " That's it ! 
that's it!" 

I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to 
clever people's hating each other, I think a little 
extra talent does sometimes make people jealous. 
They become irritated by perpetual attempts and 
failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions. 
Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is 
glorious ; but a weak flavor of genius in an essen- 
tially common person is detestable. It spoils the 
grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the 
rinsings of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught 
of fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke 
of, who always belongs to this class of slightly 
flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by the 
strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working 
and playing together in harmony. He and his fcl- 
tows are always fighting. With them familiarity 
naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise each 
other's bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or 



4 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

spavined verses, nobody ever supposed it was from 
admiration ; it was simply a contract between them- 
selves and a publisher or dealer. 

If the Mutuals have really nothing among them 
worth admiring, that alters the question. But if they 
are men with noble powers and qualities, let me tell 
you, that, next to youthful love and family affections, 
there is no human sentiment better than that which 
unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And 
what would literature or art be without such associa- 
tions ? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual 
Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and Ben 
Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members ? 
Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the 
centre, and which gave us the Spectator ? Or to 
that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and 
Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Bosvvell, most admir- 
ing among all admirers, met together ? Was there 
any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and 
Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable 
cabal in the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant 
and Sands, and as many more as they chose to asso- 
ciate with them ? 

The poor creature does not know what he is talk- 
ing about, when he abuses this noblest of institutions. 
Let him inspect its mysteries through the knot-hole 
he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium 
for his popgun. Such a society is the crown of a 
literary metropolis; if a town has not material for 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 5 

it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, 
it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to 
lodge in, but not to live in. Foolit^h people hate and 
dread and envy such an association of men of varied 
powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, 
impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, 
exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title 
M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors put 
together. 

All generous minds have a horror of what are 

commonly called " facts." They are the brute beasts 
of the intellectual domain. Who does not know 
fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or 
two which they lead after them into decent company 
like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at 
every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generaliza- 
tion, or pleasant fancy? I allow no "facts" at this 
table. What! Because bread is good and whole- 
some and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust 
a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking? Do 
not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves 
of Dread ? and is not my thought the abstract of ten 
thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you 
would choke off my speech ? 

[The above remark must be conditioned and quali- 
fied for the vulgar mind. The reader will of course 
understand the precise amount of seasoning which 
must be added to it before he adopts it as one 
of the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims 



$ THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

all responsibility for its abuse in incompetent 
hands.] 

This business of conversation is a very serious 
matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk 
with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. 
Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as 
a working professional man's advice, and costs you 
nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from 
your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody 
measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor 
bandages your brain and marrow after the opera- 
tion. 

There are men of esprit who are excessively ex- 
hausting to some people. They are the talkers who 
have what may be called jerky minds. Their 
thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. 
They say bright things on all possible subjects, but 
their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half- 
hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with 
a dull friend affords great relief It is like taking 
the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel. 

What a comfort a duU but kindly person is, to be 
sure, at times ! A ground-glass shade over a gas- 
lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes 
than such a one to our minds. 

'' Do not dull people bore you ? " said one of the 
lady-boarders, — the same that sent me her autograph- 
book last week with a request for a few original 
stanzas, not remembering that " The Pactolian " pays 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 7 

me five dollars a line for every thing I write in its 
columns. 

" Madam," said I, (she and the century were in 
their teens together,) *' all men are bores, except when 
we want them. There never was but one man whom 
I would trust with my latch-key." 

" Who might that favored person be ? " 

" Zimmermann." 

The men of genius that I fancy most have 

erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remem- 
ber what they tell of William Pinkney, the great 
pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins 
of his neck would swell and his face flash and his 
eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. 
The hydraulic aiTangements for supplying the brain 
with blood are only second in importance to its own 
organization. The bulbous-headed fellows that steam 
well when they are at work are the men that draw 
big audiences and give us marrowy books and pic- 
tures. It is a good sign to have one's feet grow cold 
when he is writing. A great wnriter and speaker once 
told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot 
water ; but for this, all his blood would have run into 
his head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws into 
the ball of a thermometer. 

You don't suppose that my remarks made at 

this table are like so many postage-stamps, do you, — 
each to be only once uttered ? If you do, you are 
mistaken. He must be a poor creature that does not 



8 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 

often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the ex 
cellent piece of advice, " Know thyself," never allud- 
ing to that sentiment again during the course of a 
protracted. existence I Why, the truths a man carries 
about with him are his tools ; and do you think a 
carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once 
to smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his 
hammer after it has driven its fiist nail ? I shall 
never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. 1 
shall use the same types when I like, but not com- 
monly the same stereotypes. A thought is often 
original, though you have uttered it a hundred times. 
It has come to you over a new route, by a new and 
express train of associations. 

Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making 
the same speech twice over, and yet be held blame- 
less. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in an 
inland city, where dwells a Litteratrice of note, was 
invited to meet her and others over the bocial teacup. 
She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in 
his new occupation. " Yes," he replied, " I am Like 
the Uama, the bird that never lights, being always 
in the cars, as he is always on the wing." — Years 
elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place once 
more for the same purpose. Another social cup after 
the lecture, and a second meeting with the distin- 
guished lady. " You are constantly going from place 
to place," she said. — " Yes," he answered, " I am like 
the Huma," — and finished the sentence as before. 



THE AUTOGflAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 9 

What horrors, when it flashed over him that he 
had made this fine speech, word for word, twice over ! 
Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps have 
fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversa- 
tion with the Huma daily during that whole interval 
of years. On the contrary, he had never once thought 
of the odious fowl until the recurrence of precisely 
the same circumstances brought up precisely the 
same idea. He ought to have been proud of the 
accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given certain 
factors, and a sound brain should always evolve the 
same fixed produc^t with the certainty of Babbage's 
calculating machine. 

What a satire, by the way, is that machine on 



the mere mathematician ! A Frankenstein-monster, 
a thing without brains and without heart, too stuptd 
to make a blunder ; that turns out results like a cprn- 
sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though 
it grind a thousand bushels of them ! 

I have an immense respect for a man of talents 
plus " the mathematics." But the calculating power 
alone should seem to be the least human of qualities, 
and to have the smallest amount of reason in it ; 
since a machine can be made to do the work of three 
or four calculators, and better than any one of them. 
Sometimes I have been troubled that I had not a 
deeper intuitive apprehension of the relations of num- 
bers. But the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ 
has consoled me. I always fancy I can hear the 



10 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

wheels clicking in a calculator's brain. The power 
of dealing with numbers is a kind of " detached lever " 
arrangement, w^hich may be put into a mighty poor 
watch. I suppose it is about as common as the 
power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a 
moderately rare endowment. 

Little localized powers, and little narrow 

streaks of specialized knowledge, are things men are 
very apt to be conceited about. Nature is very wise ; 
but for this encouraging principle how many small 
talents and little accomplishments would be neg- 
lected! Talk about conceit as much as you like, 
it is to human character what salt is to the ocean ; it 
keeps it sweet, and renders it endurable. Say rather 
it is like the natural unguent of the sea-fowl's plu- 
mage, which enables him to shed the rain that falls 
on him and the wave in which he dips. When one 
has had all his conceit taken out of him, when he 
has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak 
through, and he will fly no more. 

" So you admire conceited people, do you ? " said 
the young lady who has come to the city to be fin- 
ished off for — the duties of life. 

I am afraid you do not study logic at your school, 
my dear. It does not follow that I wish to be 
pickled in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at 
Nahant. I say that conceit is just as natural a thing 
to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But 
little-minded people's thoughts move in such small 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. jj 

circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an 
arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An 
arc in the movement of a large intellect docs not 
sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have 
the third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray 
it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seem- 
ingly impersonal ; it does not obviously imply any 
individual centre. 

Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is 
always imposing. What resplendent beauty that 
must have been which could have authorized Phryne 
to " peel " in the way she did I What fine speeches 
are those two : " Noa omtiis moriar,^^ and " I have 
taken all knowledge to be my province " ! Even in 
common people, conceit has the virtue of making 
them cheerful ; the man who thinks his wife, liis 
baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself sev- 
erally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good- 
humored person, though liable to be tedious at 
times. 

What are the great faults of conversation ? 

Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are 
the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't 
doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil 
more good talks than anything else ; — long argu- 
ments on special points between people who differ 
on the fundamental principles upon which these 
points depend. No men can have satisfactory re- 
lations with each other until they have agreed on 



12 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

certain ultimata of belief not to be disturbed in or* 
dinary conversation, and unless they have sense 
enough to trace the secondary questions depending 
upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In short, 
just as a written constitution is essential to the best 
social order, so a code of finalities is a necessary con- 
dition of profitable talk between two persons. Talk- 
ing is like playing on the harp ; there is as much in 
laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations 
as in twanging them to bring out their music. 

Do you mean to say the pun-question is not 

clearly settled in your minds ? Let me lay down the 
law upon the subject. Life and language are alike 
sacred. Homicide and verbicide — that is, violent 
treatment of a word with fatal results to its legiti- 
mate meaning, which is its life — are alike forbidden. 
Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is 
the same as man's laughter, which is the end of the 
other. A pun is primd facie an insult to the person 
you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to 
or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how 
serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all 
that is written on the subject is deep raving. I have 
committed my self-respect by talking with such a 
person. I should like to commit him, but cannot, 
because he is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological 
convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of 
Noah's ark ; also, whether the Deluge was not a 
deal huger than any modern inundation. 



THE AUTOJRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 13 

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return, 
But if a blow were given for such cause, and death 
ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts 
and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an 
aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable 
homicide. Thus, in a case lately decided before 
Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, 
and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe 
replied by asking, When charity was like a top ? It 
was in evidence that Doe preserved a dignified si- 
lence. Roe then said, " When it begins to hum." 
Doe then — and not till then — struck Roe, and his 
head -happening to hit a bound volume of the 
Monthly Rag-bag and Stolen Miscellany, intense 
mortification ensued, with a fatal result. The chief 
laid down his notions of the law to his brother jus- 
tices, who unanimously replied, " Jest so." The 
chief rejoined, that no man should jest so without 
being puni5>hed for it, and charged for the prisoner, 
who was acquitted, and the pun ordered to be 
burned by the sheriff. The bound volume was for- 
feited as a deodand, but not claimed. 

People that make puns are like wanton boys that 
put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse 
themselves and other children, but their little trick 
may upset a freight train of conversation for the 
sake of a battered witticism. 

I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, 
of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. 



14 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

(While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our land- 
lady's youngest, is called Benjamin Franklin, after 
the celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly 
merited compliment.) 

I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. 
Now be so good as to listen. The great moralist 
says : " To trifle with the vocabulary which is the 
vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the 
currency of human intelligence. He who would 
violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would in- 
vade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse, 
and repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indi- 
gestion." 

And, once more, listen to the historian. " The Pu- 
ritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously 
addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried 
them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must 
have its Royal quibble. ' Ye be burly, my Lord of 
Burleigh,' said Queen Elizabeth, * but ye shall make 
less stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.* 
The gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent 
their sanction to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully 
declared himself a descendant of 'Og, the King of 
Bashan. Sir Philip Sidney, with his last breath, 
reproached the soldier who brought him water, for 
wasting a casque full upon a dying man. A courtier, 
who saw Othello performed at the Globe Theatre, 
remarked, that the blackamoor was a brute, and not 
a man. ' Thou hast reason,' replied a great Lord, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15 

according to Plato his saying; for this be a two- 
fcgged animal with feathers.' The fatal habit be- 
came universal. The language was corrupted. The 
.infection spread to the national conscience. Political 
double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double 
meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown 
by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of 
equivocation. What was levity in the time of the 
Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age 
of the Stuarts." 

Who was that boarder that just whispered some- 
thing about the Macaulay-flowers of literature? — 
There was a dead silence. — I said calmly, I shall 
henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a 
hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my 
example. If / have used any such, it has been only 
as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot. 
We have done with them. 

If a logical mind ever found out anything 

with its logic ? — I should say that its most frequent 
work was to build a pons asinorum over chasms which 
shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. 
You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to 
prove anything that you want to prove. You can 
buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and 
that no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The 
great minds are those with a wide span, which couple 
truths related to, but far removed from, each other. 
Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track 



16 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of which these are the true explorers. I value a rpar* 
mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I un- 
derstand truth, — not for any secondary artifice in 
handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in 
argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. 1 
should not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any 
more than that of a good chess-player. Either may 
of course advise wisely, but not necessarily because 
he wrangles or plays well. 

The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand 
up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, at the expression, 
" his relations with truth, as I understand truth," and 
when I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked 
like a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense 
was good enough for him. 

Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied ; common sense, 
as you understand it. We all have to assume a 
standard of judgment in our own minds, either of 
things or persons. A man who is willing to take 
another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the 
choice of whom to follow, which is often as nice a 
matter as to judge of things for one's self. On the 
whole, I had rather judge men's minds by comparing 
their thoughts with my own, than judge of thoughts 
by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the 
other. It does not follow, of course, that I may not 
recognize another man's thoughts as broader and 
deeper than my own ; but that does not necessarily 
change my opinion, otherwise this would be at the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ]/ 

mercy of every superior mind that held a different 
one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are 
like those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, 
that serve us well so long as we keep them in our 
hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them down ! 
I have sometimes compared conversation to the 
Italian game of mora, in which one player lifts his 
hand with so many fingers extended, and the other 
gives the number if he can. I show my thought, 
another his ; if they agree, well ; if they differ, we 
find the largest common factor, if we can, but at any 
rate avoid disputing about remainders and fractions, 
which is to real talk what tuning an instrument is to 
playing on it. 

What if, instead of talking this morning, I 

should read you a copy of verses, with critical 
remarks by the author? Any of the company can 
retire that like. . 

. ALBtCM VERSES. 

When Eve had led her lord away, 

And Cain had killed his brother, 
The stars and flowers, the poets say, 

Agreed with one another 

To cheat the cunning tempter's art, 

And teach the race its duty, 
By keeping on its wicked heart 

Their eyes of light and beauty. 
2 



18 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

A million sleepless lids, they say, 

Will be at least a warning; 
And so the flowers would watch by day, 

The stars from eve to morning. 

On hill and prairie, field and lawn, 

Their dewy eyes upturning. 
The flowers still watch fromj-eddening dawn 

Till western skies are burning. 

Alas ! each hour of daylight tells 

A tale of shame so crushing, 
That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, 

And some are always blushing. 

But when the patient stars look down 

On all their hght discovers, 
The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown, 

The lips of lying lovers. 

They try to shut their saddening eyes, 

And in the vain endeavour 
We see them twinkling in the skies. 

And so they wink forever. 

What do you think of these verses my friends?— 
Is that piece an impromptu ? said rny landlady's 
daughter. (Aet. 19-[-. Tender-eyed blonde. Long 
ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. 
Locket. Bracelet. AJbum. Autograph book. Ac- 
cordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, 
junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says, 
" Yes ? " when you tell her anything.) — Oui et non, 




THE LANDLADY'S DAUOHTEH. 



TiIE AUIOCRAT OF THE BREARFAST-TABLE. 19 

ma petite, — Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven 
verses \*^ere written ofF-hand ; the other two took a 
week, — that is, were hanging round, the desk in a 
ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as long as that. 
All poets will tell you just such stories. Cest le der- 
nier 7?a5 qui coute. Don't you know how hard it is 
for some people to get out of a room after their visit 
is really over ? They want to be off, and you want 
to have them off, but they don't know how to man- 
age it. One would think they had been built in your 
parlour or study, and were waiting to be launched. 
I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane 
for such visitors, which being lubricated with cer- 
tain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphori 
cally speaking, stern-foremost, into their " native 
element," the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, 
there are poems as hard to get rid of as these rural 
visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the service- 
able rhymes, day, ray, beauty, duty, skies, eyes^ other, 
brother, mountain, fountain, and the like ; and so they 
Qo on until you think it is time for the wind-up, 
and the wind-up won't come on any terms. So they 
lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and 
end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet 
upon them, and turning them out of doors. I sus- 
pect a good many "impromptus" could tell just 
such a story as the above. — Here turning to our land- 
lady, I used an illustration which pleased the com- 
pany much at the time, and has since been highly 



20 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 

commended. " Madam," I said, " you can pour three 
gills and three quarters of honey from that pint jug, 
if it is full, in less than one minute ; but. Madam, you 
could not empty that last quarter of a gill, though you 
were turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vesseJ 
upside down for a thousand years. 

One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, 
such as you see in that copy of verses, — which I 
don't mean to abuse, or to praise either. I always 
feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new top-leathers 
to an old pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am 
fitting sentiments to these venerable jingles. 

• • • youth 

• • • morning 
• • • • truth 

• • • warning. 

Nine tenths of the " Juvenile Poems " written 
spring out of the above musical and suggestive co- 
incidences. 

" Yes ? " said our landlady's daughter. 

I did not address the following remark to her, and 
I trust, from her limited range of reading, she will 
never see it; I said it softly to my next neighbour. 

When a young female wears a flat circular side- 
curl, gummed on each temple, — when she walks 
with a male, not arm in arm, but his arm against 
the back of hers, — and when she says " Yes ? " with 
the note of interrogation, you are generally safe in 



THL AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 21 

asking her what wages she gets, and who the " feller'* 
was you saw her with. 

" What were you whispering ? " said the daughter 
of the house, moistening her lips, as she spoke, in a 
very engaging manner. 

" I was only laying down a principle of social 
diagnosis." 

« Yes ? " 

It is curious to see how the same wants and 

tastes find the same implements and modes of ex- 
pression in all times and places. The young ladies 
of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had 
a sort of crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius 
to the largest spread of our own lady-baskets. When 
"I fling a Bay-State shawl over my shoulders, I am 
only taking a lesson from the climate that the Indian 
had learned before me. A blanket-shawl we call it, 
and not a plaid ; and we wear it like the aborigines, 
and not like the Highlanders. 

We are the Romans of the modern world, — 

the great assimilating people. Conflicts and con- 
quests are of course necessary accidents with us, as 
with our prototypes. And so we come to their style 
of weapon. Our army sword is the short, stiff, 
pointed gladius of the Romans ; and the American 
bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to meet the 
daily wants of civil society. I announce at this 
table an axiom not to be found in Montesquieu ot 
the journals of Congress : — 



22 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its 
boundaries. 

Corollary, It was the Polish lance that left Poland 
at last with nothing of her own to bound. 

" Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear ! " 

What business had Sarmatia to be fighting foi 
liberty with a fifteen-foot pole between her ^nd the 
breasts of her enemies ? If she had but clutched 
the old Roman and young American weapon, and 
come to close quarters, there might have been a 
chance for her ; but it would have spoiled the best 
passage in " The Pleasures of Hope." 

Self-made men ? — Well, yes. Of course every 

body likes and respects self-made men. It is a great 
deal better to be made in that way than not to be 
made at all. Are any of you younger people old 
enough to remember that Irishman's house on the 
marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from 
drain to chimney-top with his own hands ? It took 
him a good many years to build it, and one could 
see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little 
wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in 
general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have 
built a better house ; but it was a very good house 
for a " self-made " carpenter's house, and people 
praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irish- 
man had succeeded. They never thought of prais- 
ing the fine blocks of houses a little fartner on. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFaST-TABLE. 22 

Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his 
own jack-knife, deserves more credit, if that is all, 
than the regular engine-turned article, shaped by the 
most approved pattern, and French-polished by so- 
ciety and travel. But as to saying that one is every 
way the equal of the other, that is another matter. 
The right of strict social discrimination of all things 
and j)ersons, according to their merits, native or ac- 
quired, is one of the most precious republican privi- 
leges. I take the liberty to exercise it, when I say, 
that, other things being equal^ in most relations of 
life I prefer a man of family. 

What do I mean by a man of family?— O, I'll 
give you a general idea of what I mean. Let us 
give him a first-rate fit out ; it costs us nothing. 

Four or five generations of gentleifien and gentle- 
women ; among them a member of his Majesty's 
Council for the Province, a Governor or so, one or 
two Doctors of Divinity, a member of Congress, not 
later than the time of top-boots with tassels. 

Family portraits. The member of the Council, 
by Smibert. The great merchant-uncle, by Copley, 
full length, sitting in his arm-chair, in a velvet cap 
and flowered robe, with a globe by him, to show the 
range of his commercial transactions, and letters with 
large red seals lying round, one directed conspicu- 
ously to The Honourable etc. etc. Great-grand- 
mother, by the same artist ; brown satin, lace very 
fine, hands superlative ; grand old lady, stiffish, but 



24 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, an 
gular, hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of 
Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb full-blown, mediaeval gen- 
tleman, with a fiery dash of Tory blood in his veins, 
tempered down with that of a fine old rebel grand- 
mother, and warmed up with the best of old India 
Madeira ; his face is one flame of ruddy sunshine ; 
his ruffled shirt rushes out of his bosom with an im- 
petuous generosity, as if it would drag his heart 
after it ; and his smile is good for twenty thousand 
dollars to the Hospital, besides ample bequests to all 
relatives and dependants. 2. Lady of the same ; 
remarkable cap ; high waist, as in time of Empire ; 
trust a la Josephine ; wisps of curls, like celery-tips, 
at sides of forehead ; complexion clear and warm, 
like rose-cordial. As for the miniatures by Malbone, 
we don't count them in the gallery. 

Books, too, with the names of old college-students 
in them, — family names ; — you will find them at the 
head of their respective classes in the days when stu- 
dents took rank on the catalogue from their parents' 
condition. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appellations 
of youthful progenitors, and Hie liber est mens on 
the title-page. A set of Hogarth's original plates. 
Pope, original edition, 15 volumes, London, 1717. 
Barrow on the lower shelves, in folio. Tillotson 
on the upper, in a little dark platoon of octo-dec- 
imos. 

Some family silver ; a string of wedding and fune- 



'THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 25 

ral rings ; the arms of the family curiously blazoned ; 
the same in worsted, by a maiden aunt. 

If the man of family has an old place to keep 
these things in, furnished with claw-footed chairs 
and black mahogany tables, and tall bevel-edged 
mirrors, and stately upright cabinets, his outfit is 
complete. 

No, my friends, I go (always, other things being 
equal) for the man who inherits family traditions 
and the cumulative humanities of at least four or 
five generations. Above all things, as a child, he 
should have tumbled about in a library. All men 
are afraid of books, who have not handled them 
from infancy. Do you suppose our dear didascalos 
over there ever read Poll Synopsis^ or consulted Cas- 
telli Lexicon^ while he was growing up to their stat- 
ure ? Not he ; but virtue passed through the hem 
of their parchment and leather garments whenever 
he touched them, as the precious drugs sweated 
through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. I 
tell you he is at home wherever he smells the invig- 
orating fragrance of Russia leather. No self-made 
man feels so. One may, it is true, have all the an- 
tecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a 
shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and 
yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them 
change places. Our social aiTangement has this 
great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as 
they change specific gravity, without being clogged 



26 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

by layers of prescription. Bat I still insist on my 
democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man 
with the gallery of family porti-aits against the one 
with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotype, unless I 
find out that the last is the better of the two. 

1 should have felt more nervous about the 

^ate comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But 
it is very gi'een yet, if I am not mistaken ; and be- 
sides, there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I 
cannot bring myself to think was made for nothing. 
If certain things, which seem to me essential to a 
millennium, had come to pass, I should have been 
frightened; but they haven't. Perhaps you would 
like to hear my 

LATTEll-DAY WARNINGS. 

When legislators keep the law, 

When banks dispense with bolts and locks, 

When berries, whortle — rasp — and straw — 
Grow bigger downwards through the box, — 

When he that selleth house or land 
Shows leak in roof or flaw in right, — 

When haberdashers choose the stand 

Whose window hath the broadest light,— 

When preachers tell us all they think, 

And party leaders all they mean, — 
When what we pay for, that we drink, 

From real grape and cofiee-bean, — 



THE AUfOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 27 

When lawyers take what they would give, 
And doctors give what they would take, — 

When city fathers eat to live, 

Save when they fast for conscience' sake, 

When one that hath a horse on sale 

Shall bring his merit to the proof, 
Without a lie for every nail 

That holds the iron on the hoof, — 

AMien in the usual place for rips 

Our gloves are stitched with special care, 

And guarded well the whalebone tips 
Where first umbrellas need repair, — 

When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot 

The power of suction to resist, 
And claret-bottles harbor not 

Such dimples as would hold your fist, — 

When publishers no longer steal, 

And pay for what they stole before, — 
When the first locomotive's wheel 

Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore ; — 

Till then let Gumming blaze away. 

And Miller's saints blow up the globe ; 
But when you see that blessed day. 

Then order your ascension robe ! 



The company seemed to like the verses, and 1 
promised them to read others occasionally, if they 
had a mind to hear them. Of course they would 



28 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

not expect it every morning. Neither must the reader 
suppose that all these things I have reported were 
said at any one breakfast-time. I have not taken the 
trouble to date them, as Raspail, pere^ used to date 
every proof he sent to the printer ; but they were 
scattered over several breakfasts ; and I have said a 
good many more things since, which I shall very 
possibly print some time or other, if I am urged to 
do it by judicious friends. 

I finished off with reading some verses of my friend 
the Professor, of whom you may perhaps hear more 
by and by. The Professor read them, he told me, at 
a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our great 
Historians met a few of his many friends at their 
invitation. 



Yes, we knew we must lose bim, — though friendship may claim 
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame ; 
Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 
*Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. 

As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, — 
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, — 
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string, 
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. 

"What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom 

Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bicom, 

Wliile the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes 

That caught from our sunsets the stain of their sides ! 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 29 

In the alcoves of death, In the charnels of time, 
Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, 
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, 
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue ! 

Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed 

From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed ! 

Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, 

Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom ! 



The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake 
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake, 
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, 
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine. 

So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed 
W^hen the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed : 
The true Knight of Learning, — the world holds him dear, — 
Love Ifless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career! 



11. 

I REALLY believe some people save their bright 
thoughts, as being too precious for conversation. 
What do you think an admiring friend said the 
other day to one that was talking good things, — 
good enough to print? " Why," said he, "you are 
wasting mechantable literature, a cash article, at 
the rate, as nearly as I can teU, of fifty dollars an 



30 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

hour." The talker took him to the window and 
asked him to look out and tell what he saw. 

" Nothing but a very dusty street," he said, " and 
a man driving a sprinkling-machine through it." 

" Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that 
water ? What would be the state of the highways 
of life, if we did not drive our thought-sprinklers 
through them with the valves open, sometimes ? 

" Besides, there is another thing about this talking, 
which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us; — 
the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls 
the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image 
a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist 
models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic, — 
you can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and 
rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily, when 
you work that soft material, that there is nothing 
like it for modelling. Out of it come the shapes 
which you turn into marble or bronze in your im- 
mortal books, if you happen to write such. Or, to 
use another illustration, \witing or printing is like 
shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's 
mind, or miss it ; — but talking is like playing at a 
mark with the pipe of an engine ; if it is within 
reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hit- 
ting it." 

The company agreed that this last illustration was 
of superior excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, 
* Fust-rate." I acknowledged the compliment, but 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3|^ 

gently rebuked the expression. " Fast-rate," " prime," 
" a prime article," " a superior piece of goods," " a 
handsome garment," " a gent in a flowered vest," — 
all such expressions are final. They blast the lineage 
of him or her who utters them, for generations up 
and down. There is one other phrase which will 
soon come to be decisive of a man's social status^ if 
it is not already: " That tells the whole story." It 
is an expression which vulgar and conceited people 
particularly affect, and which well-meaning ones, who 
know better, catch from them. It is intended to 
stop all debate, like the previous question in the 
General Court. Only it doesn't; simply because 
"that" does not usually tell the whole, nor one half 
of the whole story. 

It is an odd idea, that almost all our people 

fiave had a professional education. To become a 
doctor a man must study some three years and hear 
a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much 
study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but 
probably not more than this. Now most decent 
people hear one hundred lectures or sermons (dis- 
courses) oil theology every year, — and this, twenty, 
thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many 
religious books besides. The clergy, however, r^ely 
hear any sermons except what they preach them- 
selves. A dull preacher might be conceived, there- 
fore, to lapse into a state of quasi heathenism, simply 
for want of religious instruction. And on the other 



32 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

hand, an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to 
a succession of wise teachers, might become actually 
better educated in theology than any one of thcra. 
We are all theological students, and more of us qual- 
ified as doctors of divinity than have received de- 
grees at any of the universities. 

It is not strange, therefore, that very good people 
should often find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep 
their attention fixed upon a sermon treating feebly a 
subject which they have thought vigorously about for 
years, and heard able men discuss scores of times. I 
have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull dis- 
course acts inductively^ as electricians would say, in 
developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed 
to think with what accompaniments and variations 
and Jioriture I have sometimes followed the droning 
of a heavy speaker, — not willingly, — for my habit is 
reverential, — but as a necessary result of a b^light con- 
tinuous impression on the senses and the mind, which 
kept both in action without furnishing the food they 
required to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with 
a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a dull 
speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable plum- 
age flaps heavily along his straight-forward course, 
whiie the other sails round him, over him, under him, 
leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black 
feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight 
of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the 
same time the crow does, having cut a perfect laby- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 33 

rinth of loops and knots and spirals while the slow 
fowl was painfully working from one end of his 
straight line to the other. 

[I think these remarks were received rather coolly 
A temporary boarder from the country, consisting of 
a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with a 
parchment forehead and a dry little " frisette " shin- 
gling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, 
a black dress too rusty for recent grief and contours 
in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was 
reported to have been very virulent about what I 
said. So I went to my good old minister, and re- 
peated the remarks, as nearly as I could remember 
them, to him. He laughed good-naturedly, and said 
there was considerable truth in them. He thouj^ht 
he could tell when people's minds were wandering, 
by their looks. In the earlier years of his ministry 
he, had sometimes noticed this, when he was preach- 
ing ; — very little of late years. Sometimes, when his 
colleague was preaching, he observed this kind of 
inattention ; but after all, it was not so very un- 
natural. I will say, by the way, that it is a rule I 
have long followed, to tell my worst thoughts to my 
minister, and my best thoughts to the young people 
I talk with.] 

1 want to make a literary confession now, 

which I believe nobody has made before me. You 
know very well that I write verses sometimes, be- 
cause I have read some of them at this table. (The 

2* 



84 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

company assented, — two or three of them in a re* 
signed sort of way, as I thought, as if they supposed 
I had an epic in my pocket, and was going to read 
half a dozen books or so for their benefit.) — I con- 
tinued. Of course I write some lines or passages 
which are better than others ; some which, compared 
with the others, might be called relatively excellent. 
It is in the nature of things that I should consider 
these relatively excellent lines or passages as abso- 
lutely good. So much must be pardoned to human- 
ity. Now I never wrote a " good " line in my life, 
but the moment after it was written it seemed a 
hundred years old. Very commonly I had a sudden 
conviction that I had seen it somewhere. Possibly I 
may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I 
do not remember that I ever once detected any his- 
torical truth in these sudden convictions of the an- 
tiquity of my new thought or phrase. I have learned 
utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to 
bully me out of a thought or line. 

This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number 
of the company was diminished by a small seces- 
sion.) Any new formula which suddenly emerges 
in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of 
thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its 
appearance among the recognized growths of our 
intellect. Any crystalline group of musical words 
has had a long and still period to form in. Here ia 
one theory 




TaS 8CHOOLMI8TKESS. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 35 

But there is a larger law which perhaps compre* 
hends these facts. It is this. The rapidity with 
which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct 
ratio to the squares of their importance. Their ap- 
parent age runs up miraculously, like the value of 
diamonds, as they increase in magnitude. A gi-cat 
calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an 
hour after it has happened. It stains backward 
through all th^ leaves we have turned over in the 
book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry 
on the page we are turning. For this we seem to 
have lived ; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we 
leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror ; in the 
" dissolving views " of dark day-visions ; all omens 
pointed to it; all paths led to it After the tossing 
half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows such 
an event, it comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at 
waking ; in a few moments it is old again, — old as 
fTternity. 

[I wish I had not said all this then and there. I 
might have known better. The pale schoolmistress, 
in her mourning dress, was looking at me, as I no- 
ticed, with a wild sort of expression. All at once 
the blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury 
di'ops from a broken barometer-tube, and she melted 
away from her seat like an image of snow ; a slung- 
shot could not have brought her down better. God 
forgive me ! 

After this little episode, I continued, to some few 



36 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that remained balancing teaspoons on the edges of 
cups, twirling knive-s, or tilting upon the hind legs of 
their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where 
they left gratuitous advertisements of various popu- 
lar cosmetics.] 

When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, 
new position of trial, he finds the place fits him as 
if he had been measured for it. He has committed 
a great crime, for instance, and is sent to the State 
Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, limitations, 
privileges, all the sharp conditions of his new life, 
stamp themselves upon his consciousness as the 
signet on soft wax ; — a single pressure is enough. 
Let me strengthen the image a little. Did you ever 
happen to see that most soft-spoken and velvet- 
handed steam-engine at the Mint? The smooth 
piston slides backward and forward as a lady might 
slip her delicate finger in and out of a ring. The 
engine lays one of its fingers calmly, but firmly, upon 
a bit of metal ; it is a coin now, and will remember 
that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the 
date upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries. 
So it is that a great silent-moving misery puts a new 
stamp on us in an hour or a moment, — as sharp an 
impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to en- 
grave it. 

It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale 
professional dealers in misfortune ; undertakers and 
jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass 



THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3^ 

out of the individual life you were living into the 
rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. 
Do the worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that 
can be thought of, you find yourself in a category of 
humanity that stretches back as far as Cain, and 
with an expert at your elbow who has studied your 
case all out beforehand, and is waiting for you with 
his implements of hemp or mahogany. I believe, if 
a man were to be burned in any of our cities to- 
morrow for heresy, there would be found a master 
of ceremonies that knew just how many fagots were 
necessary, and the best way of arranging the whole 
matter. 

So we have not won the Goodwood cup ; au 

contraire^ we were a " bad fifth," if not worse than 
that ; and trying it again, and the third time, has not 
yet bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as 
any of my fellow-citizens, — too patriotic in fact, for I 
have got into hot water by loving too much of my 
country ; in short, if any man, whose fighting weight 
is not more than eight stone four pounds, disputes 
it, I am ready to discuss the point with him. I 
should have gloried to see the stars and stripes in 
front at the finish. I love my country, and I love 
horses. Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs over 
my desk, and Herring's portrait of Plenipotentiary, 
—whom I saw run at Epsom, — over my fireplace 
Did I not elope from school to see Revenge, and 
Prospect, and Little John, and Peacemaker run over 



38 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the race-course where now yon suburban village 
flourishes, in the year eighteen hundred and ever-so- 
few ? Though I never owned a horse, have I not 
been the proprietor of six equine females, of which 
one was the prettiest little " Morgin " that ever 
stepped ? Listen, then, to an opinion I have often 
expressed long before this venture of ours in England. 
HoTse'7'acing' is not a republican institution ; horse- 
trotting' is. Only very rich persons can keep race- 
horses, and everybody knows they are kept mainly 
as gambling implements. All that matter about 
blood and speed we wont discuss ; we understand 
all that ; useful, very, — of course, — great obligations 
to the Godol})hin " Arabian," and the rest. I say 
racing horses are essentially gambling implements, 
as much as roulette tables. Now I am not preach- 
ing at this moment ; I may read you one of my 
sermons some other morning; but I maintain that 
gambling, on the great scale, is not republican. It 
belongs to two phases of society, — a cankered over- 
civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and 
the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the 
semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its 
primitive elements. Real Republicanism is stern 
and severe ; its essence is not in forms of govern- 
ment, but in the omnipotence of public opinion 
which grows out of it. This public opinion cannot 
prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and 
does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. But 



iHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 39 

horse-racing is the most public way of gambling, 
and with all its immense attractions to the sense and 
the feelings, — to which I plead very susceptiblr, — the 
disguise is too thin that covers it, and everybody 
knows what it means. Its supporters are the South- 
ern gentry, — fine fellows, no doubt, but not republi- 
cans exactly, as we understand the term, — a few 
Northern millionnaires more or less thoroughly mil- 
lioned, who do not represent the real people, and the 
mob of sporting men, the best of whom are com- 
monly idlers, and the worst very bad neighbors to 
have near one in a crowd, or to meet in a dark alley. 
In England, on the other hand, with its aristocratic 
institutions, racing is a natural growth enough ; the 
passion for it spreads downwards through all classes, 
from the Queen to the costermongcr. London is 
like a shelled corn-cob on the Derby day, and there 
is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire a 
saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down 
on his office-stool the next day without wincing. 

Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a 
moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but essen- 
tially something to bet upon, as much as the thim- 
ble-rigger's " little joker." The trotter is essentially 
and daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for 
sporting men. 

What better reason do you want for the fact that 
the racer is most cultivated and reaches his greatest 
perfection in England, and that the trotting horses 



40 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of America beat the world ? And why should we 
nave expected that the pick — if it was the pick — of 
our few and far-between racing stables should beat 
the pick of England and France ? Throw over the 
fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show 
for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which 
we all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, 
which some of us must plead guilty to. 

We may beat yet. As an American, I hope we 
shall. As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, 1 
am not so anxious about it. Wherever the trottins: 
norse goes, he carries in his train brisk onmibuses, 
lively bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly 
butcher's wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome 
afternoon drive with wife and child, — all the forms 
of moral excellence, except truth, which does not 
agree with any kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings 
with him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking, the 
eating of oysters, and a distaste for mob-caps and 
the middle-aged virtues. 

And by the way, let me beg you not to call a trot- 
ting match a race^ and not to speak of a " thorough- 
bred " as a " blooded " horse, unless he has been re- 
cently phlebotomized. I consent to your saying 
" blood horse," if you like. Also, if, next year, we 
send out Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of 
the great national four-mile race in 7 18|, and they 
happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like 
men and gentlemen about it, if you know how. 



THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. Jj 

[I felt a great deal better after blowing oft' tlie ill- 
temper coiiJensed in the above paragraph. To brag 
little, — to show well, — to crow gently, if in luck, — 
to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, arc 
the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I 
think we have shown them in any great perfection 
of late.] 

Apropos of horses. Do you know how im- 
portant good jockeying is to authors ? Judicious 
management ; letting the public see your animal just 
enough, and not too much; holding him up hard 
when the market is too full of him ; letting him out 
at just the right buying intervals; always gently 
feeling his mouth ; never slacking and never jerking 
the rein ; — this fs what I mean by jockeying. 

When an author has a number of books out 

a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Sig- 
nor Blitz docs his dinner-plates ; fetching each one 
up, as it begins to " wabble," by an advertisement, 
a puff, or a quotation. 

Whenever the extracts from a livinsr writer 

begin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious 
reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming. 
The extracts are ground-bait. 

Literary life is full of curious phenomena. T 

don't know that there is anything more noticeable 
than what we may call conventional reputations. 
There is a tacit understanding in every community 
of men of letters that they will not disturb the pop- 



42 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded ce- 
lebrity. There are various reasons for this forbear 
ance : one is old ; one is rich ; one is good-natured ; 
one is such a favorite with the pit that it would not 
be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The 
venerable augurs of the literary or scientific temple 
may smile faintly when one of the tribe is men- 
tioned ; but the farce is in general kept up as well a3 
the Chinese comic scene of entreating and imploring 
a man to stay with you, with the implied compact 
between you that he shall by no means think of 
doing it. A poor wretch he must be who would 
wantonly sit down on one of these bandbox reputa- 
tions. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of 
unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely,' if you keep it 
from meddling hands ; but break its tail off, and it 
explodes and resolves itself into powder. These 
celebrities I speak of are the Prince- Rupert's-drops 
of the learned and polite world. See how the papers 
treat them ! What an array of pleasant kaleido- 
scopic phrases, which can be arranged in ever so 
many charming patterns, is at their service ! How 
kind the " Critical Notices " — where small author- 
ship comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sug- 
ary, and sappy — always are to them ! Well, life 
would be nothing without paper-credit and other fic- 
tions ; so let them pass current. Don't steal their 
chips ; don't puncture their swimming-bladders ; don't 
come down on their pasteboard boxes ; don't break 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 43 

the ends 01 their brittle and unstable reputations, 
you fellows who all feel sure that your names wil' 
be household words a thousand years from now. 

" A thousand years is a good while," said the old 
gentleman who sits opposite, thoughtfully. 

Where have I been for the last three or four 

days ? Down at the Island, deer-shooting. — How 
many did I bag ? I brought home one buck shot. — 
The Island is where ? No matter. It is the most 
splendid domain that any man looks upon in these 
latitudes. Blue sea around it, and running up into 
its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby 
in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to 
fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails bang- 
ing and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of 
miles ; beeches, oaks, most numerous ; — many of 
them hung with moss, looking like bearded Druids ; 
some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed 
grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in 
and goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely *^ 
sifted that they are as soft as swan's down. Rocks 
scattered about, — Stonchenge-like monoliths. Fresh- 
water lakes ; one of them, Mary's lake, crystal-clear, 
full of flashing pickerel lying under the lily-pads hke 
tigers in the jungle. Six pounds of ditto killed one 
morning for breakfast. YaGo fecit. 

The divinity-student looked as if he would like to 
question my Latin. No, sir, I said, — you need not 
trouble yourself. There is a higher law in grammar, 



ii THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

not to be put down by Andrews and Stoddard. 
Then I went on. 

Such hospitality as that island has seen there has 
not been the like of in these our New England sov- 
ereignties. There is nothing in the shape of kind- 
ness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which 
has not found its home in that ocean-principality. 
It has welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, 
from the pale clergyman who came to breathe the 
sea-air with its medicinal salt and iodine, to the 
great statesman who turned his back on the afifau-s 
of empire, and smoothed his Olympian forehead, 
and flashed his white teeth in merriment over the 
long table, where his wit was the keenest and his 
story the best. 

[I don't believe any man ever talked like that in 
this world. I don't believe / talked just so ; but the 
fact is, in reporting one's conversation, one cannot 
help Blair-ing it up more or less, ironing out crumpled 
paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping and 
plaiting a little sometimes ; it is as natural as prink- 
ing at the looking-glass.] 

How can a man help writing poetry in such 

a place ? Everybody does write poetry that goes 
there. In the state archives, kept in the library of 
the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpub- 
lished verse, — some by well-known hands, and others 
quite as good, by the last people you would think of 
as versifiers, — men who could pension off all the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 45 

genuine poets in the country, and buy ten acres of 
Boston common, if it was for sale, with what they 
had left. Of course I had to write my little copy of 
verses with the rest ; here it is, if you will hear me 
read it. When the sun is in the west, vessels sail- 
ing in an easterly direction look bright or dark to 
one who observes them from the north or south, 
according to the tack they are sailing upon. Watch- 
ing them from one of the windows of the great 
mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and mor- 
alized thus : — 

SUN AND SHADOW. 

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, 

To tbe billows of foam-crested blue, 
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, 

Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue : 
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray 

As the chaff in the stroke of the flail ; 
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, 

The sun gleaming bright on her sail. 

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, — 

Of breakers that whiten and roar ; 
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun 

They see him that gaze from the shore ! 
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, 

To the rock that is under his lee, 
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf^ 

O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. 



46 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BT?EAKF AST-TABLE. 

■ Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves 

Where life and its ventures are laid, 
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves 

May see us in sunshine or shade ; 
Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark, 

We'll trim our broad sail as before, 
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, 

Nor ask how we look from the shore ! 

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind 



overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break 
its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among 
them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse 
their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate 
force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a 
man from going mad. We frequently see persons in 
insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what 
are called religious mental disturbances. I confess 
that I think better of them than of many who hold 
the same notions, and keep their wits and appear to 
enjoy life very well, outside of the asylums. Any 
decent person ought to go mad, if he really holds 
such or such opinions. It is very much to his dis- 
credit in every point of view, if he does not. What 
is the use of my saying what some of these opinions 
are ? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I 
should think ought to send you straight over to 
Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or 
any human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is 
brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for 
the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races, — 



niE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TARLK. 47 

anything that assumes the necessity of the extermi- 
nation of instincts which were given to be regulated, 
— no matter by what name you call it, — no matter 
whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it, 
— if received, ought to produce insanity in every 
well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a 
normal one, under the circumstances. I am very 
much ashamed of some people for retaining their 
reason, when they know perfectly well that if they 
were not the most stupid or the most selfish of hu- 
man beings, they would become non-compotes at once. 

[Nobody understood this but the theological stu- 
dent and the schoolmistress. They looked intelli- 
gently at each other; but whether they were thinking 
about my paradox or not, I am not clear. — It would 
be natural enough. Stranger things have happened. 
Love and Death enter boarding-houses without ask- 
ing the price of board, or whether there is room for 
them. Alas, these young people are poor and pallid! 
Love should be both rich and rosy, but must be either 
rich or rosy. Talk about military duty! What is 
that to the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, 
with the title of mistress, and an American female 
constitution, which collapses just in the middle third 
of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber, if it 
happen to live through the period when health and 
strength are most wanted ?] 

Ila/e I ever acted in private theatricals? 

Often. I have played the part of the " Poor Gentle- 



48 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

man," before a great many audiences, — more, I trust 
than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage- 
costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork • 
bat I was placarded and announced as a public per- 
former, and at the proper hour I came forward wdth 
the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and 
made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my 
name stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed 
to show myself in the place by daylight. I have 
gone to a town with a sober literary essay in my 
pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced as 
the most desperate of buffos^ — one who was obliged 
to restrain himself in the full exercise of his powers, 
from prudential considerations. I have been through 
as many hardships as Ulysses, in the pursuit of my 
histrionic vocation. I have travelled in cars until the 
conductors all knew me like a brother. I have run 
off the rails, and stuck all night in snow-drifts, and 
sat behind females that would have the window open 
when one could not wink without his eyelids freez- 
ing together. Perhaps I shall give you some of my 
experiences one of these days ; — I will not now, for 
I have something else for you. 

Private theatricals, as I have figm*ed in them in 
country lyceum-halls, are one thing, — and private 
theatricals, as they may be seen in certain gilded and 
frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are another. Yes, 
it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who 
do not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 49 

stride, like most of our stage heroes and heroines, in 
the characters which show off their graces and talents ; 
most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, high 
bred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a pleas- 
ant voice, acting in those love-dramas which make 
us young again to look upon, when real youth and 
beauty will play them for us. 

Of course I wrrote the prologue I was asked 

to write. I did not see the play, though. I knew 
there was a young lady in it, and that somebody was 
in love with her, and she was in love with him, and 
somebody (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to inter- 
fere, and, very naturally, the young lady was too 
sharp for him. The play of course ends charmingly ; 
there is a general reconciliation, and all concerned 
form a line and take each others' hands, as people 
always do after they have made up their quarrels, — 
and then the curtain falls, — if it does not stick, as it 
commonly does at private theatrical exhibitions, in 
which case a boy is detailed to pull it down, which 
he does, blushing violently. 

Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to 
change my caesuras and cadences for anybody ; so 
if you do not like the heroic, or iambic trimeter 
brachy-catalectic, you had better not wait to hear it. 

TfflS IS IT. 

A Prolog-.ie ? Well, of course the ladies know ; — 
I have my doubts. No matter, — here we go 1 
8 



50 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLK 

What is a Prologue ? Let our Tutor teach : 
Pro means beforehand ; logos stands for speech. 
*Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, 
The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings ; — 
Prologues in metre are to other pros 
As worsted stockings are to engine-hose. 

" The world's a stage," — as Shakspeare said, one day ; 

The stage a world — was what he meant to say. 

The outside world's a blunder, that is clear ; 

The real world that Nature meant is here. 

Here every foundling finds its lost mamma ; 

Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; 

Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, 

The cheats are taken in the traps they laid ; 

One after one the troubles all are past 

Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, 

When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, 

Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall. 

— Here sufferinor virtue ever finds relief. 

And black-browed rufiians always come to grief, 

— When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech, 

And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach. 

Cries, " Help, kyind Heaven ! " and drops upon her knees 

On the green — baize, — beneath the (canvas) trees, — 

See to her side avenging Valor fly : — 

" Ha ! Villain ! Draw ! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die I " 

— When the poor hero flounders in despair, 

},x)me dear lost uncle turns up millionnaire, — 

Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy. 

Sobs on his neck, ''My hoy ! My boy ! ! MY BOY III*' 

Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night. 
Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. fji 

Ladies, attend ! 'Wliile woful cares and doubt 
Wrong the soft passion in the world without, 
Though fortune scowl, though })rudence interfere, 
One thing is certain : Love will triumph here I 

♦ 

Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, — 

The world's great masters, when you're out of school,— 

Learn the brief moral of our evening's play: 

Man has his will, — but woman has her way ! 

While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire. 

Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire, — 

The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves 

Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. 

All earthly powers confess your sovereign art 

But that one rebel, — woman's wilful heart. 

All foes you master ; but a woman's wit 

Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit 

So, just to picture what her art can do. 

Hear an old story made as good as new. 

Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, 

Alike was famous for his arm and blade. 

One day a prisoner Justice had to kill 

Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. 

Bare-armed, swart-%asaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, 

Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. 

His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam. 

As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. 

He sheathed his blade ; he turned as if to go ; 

The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. 

" Why strikest not ? Perform thy murderous act," 

The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) 

" Friend I have struck," the artist straight replied ; 

" Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." 



52 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

He held his snufT-box, — "Now then, if you please !" 
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze, 
Off his head tumbled, — bowled along the floor, — 
Bounced down the steps ; — the prisoner said no more I 

Woman ! thy falchion is a glittering eye ; 
If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die ! 
Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head ; 
We die with love, and never dream we're dead ! 

The prologue went off very well, as I hear. No 
alterations were suggested by the lady to whom it 
was sent, so far as I know. Sometimes people criti- 
cize the poems one sends them, and suggest all sorts 
of improvements. Who was that silly body that 
wanted Burns to alter " Scots wha hae," so as to 
lengthen the last line, thus ? — 

" Edward ! " Chains and slavery I 

Here is a little poem I sent a short time since to a 
committee for a certain celebration. I understood 
that it was to be a festive and convivial occasion, and 
ordered myself accordingly. It seems the president 
of the day was what is called a " teetotaller." 1 
received a note from him in the following words, 
containing the copy subjoined, with the emendations 
annexed to it. 

" Dear Sir, — your poem gives good satisfaction to 
the committee. The sentiments expressed with ref- 
erence to liquor are not, however, those generally en- 
tertained by this community. I have therefore con* 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 53 

Sillied the clergyman of this place, who has made 
some slight changes, which he thinks will remove all 
objections, and keep the valuable portions of the 
poem. Please to inform me of your charge for said 
poem. Our means are limited, etc., etc., etc. 

" Yours with respect." 

HERE IT IS,— WITH THE SLIGHT ALTERATIONS! 
Come ! fill a fresh bumper, — for why should we go 

logwood 

"While the nootar still reddens our cups as they flow ? 

decoction 

Pour out the rich juicc a still bright with the sun, 

dye-«tuff 

Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubica shall run. 

half-ripened apples 

The purple g - lcbcd c ' la n tcra their life-dews have bled; 

taste sugar of lead 

How sweet is the bre a th of the fr^t graG ' ^c th e y sh e d ! 
- • rank poisons wines!!! 

For summer's laet rosea lie hid in the wwts 

stable-boys smoking long-nines. 

That were garnered by m aidens w feo-tatigh 

scowl howl scoff 



Then a shhW, and a ^a^, and a toast , and a efeeef, 

strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer 

For all t bc sfooJ -^vino, and w eV^-^eiQe-ef4t4iefe ! 
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, 

Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all ! 
xjvUj^ ^\\, mvi - ^uj 6Crva,m , t ilal lau g ii S lOr U3 - u.t r I 

The company said I had been shabbily treated, and 



54 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

advised me to charge the committee double, — which 
I did. Bat as I never got my pay, I don't know that 
it made much difference. I am a very particulai 
person about having all I write printed as I write it. 
I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a 
double re-revise, or fourth-proof rectified impression 
of all my productions, especially verse. A misprint 
kills a sensitive author. An intentional change of 
his text murders him. No wonder so many poets 
die young! 

I have nothing more to report at this time, except 
two pieces of advice I gave to the young women at 
table. One relates to a vulgarism of language, 
which I grieve to say is sometimes heard even from 
female lips. The other is of more serious purport, 
and applies to such as contemplate a change of con- 
dition, — matrimony, in fact. 

The woman who " calculates " is lost. 

Put not your trust in money, but put youi 

money in trust. 



III. 

[The " Atlantic " obeys the moon, and its Luni- 
VBRSARY has come round again. I have gathered 
up some hasty notes of my remarks made since the 
last high tides, which I respectfully submit. Please 
to remember this is talk; just as easy and just as 
formal as I choose to make it.] 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 55 

1 never saw an author in my life — saving, 

perhajDs, one — that did not purr as audibly as a full- 
grown domestic cat, (Felis Catus, Linn.,) on having 
his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful hand. 

But let me ^ive you a caution. Be very careful 
hov- you tell an author he is drolL Ten to one he 
will hate you ; and if he does, be sure he can do you 
a mischief, and very probably will. Say you cried 
over his romance or his verses, and he will love you 
and send you a copy. You can laugh over that as 
much as you like — in private. 

Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed 

of being funny ? — Why, there are obvious reasons, 
and deep philosophical ones. The clown knows 
very well that the women are not in love with him, 
but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and 
plumed hat. Passion never laughs. The wit knows 
that his place is at the tail of a procession. 

If you want the deep underlying reason, I must 
take more time to tell it. There is a perfect con- 
sciousness in every form of wit — using that term in 
its general sense — that its essence consists in a par- 
tial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It 
throws a single ray, separate from the rest, — red 
yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, — upon an 
object; never white light; that is the province of' 
wisdom. We get beautiful eflects from wit, — all 
the prismatic colors, — but never the object as it is in 
fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind of wit, is a 



56 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

different and much shallower trick in mental optics 
throwing the shadows of two objects so that one 
overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints 
for special effects, but always keeps its essential ob- 
ject in the purest white light of tinath. — Will you 
allow me to pursue this subject a little further? 

[They didn't allow me at that time, for somebody 
happened to scrape the floor with his chair just then ; 
which accidental sound, as all must have noticed, 
has the instantaneous effect that the cutting of the 
yellow hair by Iris had upon infeHx Dido. It broke 
the charm, and that breakfast was over.] 

Don't flatter yourselves that friendship au- 
thorizes you to say disagreeable things to your inti- 
mates. On the conti'ary, the nearer you come into 
relation with a person, the more necessary do tact 
and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, 
which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant 
truths from his enemies ; they are ready enough to 
tell them. Good-breeding never forgets that amour- 
propre is universal. When you read the story of 
the Archbishop and Gil Bias, you may laugh, if you 
will, at the poor old man's delusion ; but don't forget 
that the youth was the greater fool of the two, and 
that his master served such a booby rightly in turn- 
# ing him out of doors. 

You need not get up a rebellion against what 

I say, if you find everything in my sayings is not 
exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man 



IHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFASJ-rTAEfcE". 57 

who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I 
once read an introductory lecture that looked to me 
too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found 
all its erudition was taken ready-made from D' Israeli. 
If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up 
the little great man, who had once belabored me in 
his feeble way. But one can generally tell these 
wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not 
worth the trouble of putting them in the pillory. I 
doubt the entire novelty of my remarks just made 
on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious 
of any larceny. 

Neither make too much of flaws and occasional 
overstatements. Some persons seem to think that 
absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propo- 
sitions,, is all that conversation admits. This is 
precisely as if a musician should insist on having 
nothing but perfect chords and simple melodies, — no 
diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on 
any account. Now it is fair to say, that, just as 
music must have all these, so conversation must 
have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its ex- 
aggerated truths. It is in its higher forms an artistic 
product, and admits the ideal element as much 
as pictures or statues. One man who is a little too 
litera l can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men 
of esprit. — " Yes," you say, " but who wants to hear • 
fanciful people's nonsense ? Put the facts to it, and 
then see where it is ! "—Certainly, if a man is too 

3* 



lalE AT.:;^OCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



fond of paradox, — if he is flighty and empty, — if, 
instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those 
harmonious discords, often so much better than the 
twinned octaves, in the music of thought, — if, instead 
of striking these, he jangles the chords, stick a fact 
into him like a stiletto. But remember that talking 
is one of the fine arts, — the noblest, the most impor- 
tant, and the most difficult, — and that its fluent har- 
monies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single 
harsh note. Therefore con versation which is sug- 
gestiverather than argum entative, which lets out 
the most of each talker's re.sults^pf thoughtjjsjcom- 
monly the pleasante st and the mogtj)rofita ble. I t is 
not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together 
to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are 
so many of them. 

[The company looked as if they wanted an expla- 
nation.] 

When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking 
together, it is natural enough that among the six 
there should be more or less confusion and misappre- 
hension. 

[Our landlady turned pale ; — no doubt she thought 
there was a screw loose in my intellects, — and that 
involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe- 
looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a 
sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, 
whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of 
the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lift- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 59 

ing of the brow, drawing down of the corners of i\\e 
mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Fal 
staff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up 
I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I 
should seize the carving-knife ; at any rate, he slid 
it to one side, as it were carelessly.] 

I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin 
Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities 
distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that 
dialogue between John and Thomas. 

' 1. The real John ; known only to his Maker. 

2. John's idral Jo!m ; never the real one, and often 
Three Johns. < very unUke him. 

3. Thomas's i(K*al John ; never the real John, nor 
John's Jolm, hut often very unlike either. 

( 1. The real Thomas. 
Three Thomases. -| 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 
{ 3. John's ideal Tliomas. 

Only one of the three Johns is taxed ; only one 
can be weighed on a platform-balance ; but the other 
two are just as important in the conversation. Let 
us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-look- 
ing. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred 
on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true 
light, John very possibly conceives himself to be 
youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the 
point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes 
him to be an artful rogue, we will say ; therefore he 
16", so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is 
concerned, an artful rogue, though reaily simple and 
stupid. The same conditions apply to the three 



60 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be 
found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, 
or who sees himself as others see him, there must be 
at least six persons engaged in every dialogue be- 
tween two. Of these, the least important, philo- 
sophically speaking, is the one that we have called 
the real person. No wonder two disputants often 
get angry, when there are six of them talking and 
listening all at the same time. 

[A very unphilosophical application of the above 
remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to 
the name of John, who sits near me at table. A 
certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little 
known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me 
vid this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the 
three that remained in the basket, remarking that 
there was just one apiece for him. I convinced 
him that his practical inference was hasty and il- 
logical, but in the mean time he had eaten the 
peaches.] 

The opinions of relatives as to a man's pow- 
ers are very commonly of little value ; not merely 
because they sometimes overrate their own flesh and 
blood, as some may suppose ; on the contrary, they 
are quite as likely to underrate those whom they 
have grown into the habit of considering like them- 
selves. The advent of genius is like what florists 
style the breaking of a seedling tulip into what we 
may call high-caste colors, — ten thousand dingy 




THE YOUNG FELLOW OILED JOHN. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. (31 

flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you 
prefer it, like the coming np in old Jacob's gard-^n 
of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the ^eckel pear, 
which I have sometimes seen in shop-windows. It 
is a surprise, — there is nothing to account for it. All 
.at once we find that twice two make five. Nature 
is fond of what are called "gift-enterprises.'' This 
little book of life which she has given into the hands 
of its joint possessors is commonly one of the old 
story-books bound over again. Only once in a great 
while there is a stately poem in it, or its leaves are 
illuminated with the glories of art, or they enfold a 
draft for untold values signed by the million-fold 
millionnaire old mother herself. But strangers are 
commonly the first to find the " gift" that came with 
the little book. 

It may be questioned whether anything can be 
conscious of its own flavor. Whether the musk- 
deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently 
silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of 
any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No 
man knows his own voice ; many men do not know 
their own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's 
famous "Characteristics" article; allow for exag- 
gerations, and there is a great deal in his doctrine of 
the self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes under 
the great law just stated. This incapacity of know- 
ing its own traits is often found in the family as well 
as in the individual. So never mind what y )ur 



62 TItE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

cousins, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and the rest, 
say about that fine poem you have written, but send 
it (postage-paid) to the editors, if there ar^ any, of 
the " Atlantic," — which, by the way, is not so called 
because it is a notion^ as som6 dull wits wish they 
had said, but are too late. 

rScicntific knowledge, even in the most modest 

persons, has mingled with it a something which par- 
takes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are 
bullies, and those who keep company with them are 
apt to get a bullying habit of mind ; — not of man- 
ners, perhaps ; they may be soft and smooth, but the 
smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as 
the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly 
the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, 
wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his 
" mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in 
the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity 
in a mathematical fact ; if you bring up against it, 
it never yields a hair's breadth ; everything must go 
to pieces that comes in collision with it. What the 
mathematician knows being absolute, unconditional, 
incapable of suffering question, it should tend, in 
the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of 
thinking. So of those who deal with the palpable 
and often unmistakable facts of external nature ; only 
in a less degree. Every probability — and most of 
our common, w^orking beliefs are probabilities — is 
provided with buffers at both ends, which break the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. Gb 

force of opposite opinioiis clashing against it; but 
Bcientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy, 
no possibility of yielding. All this must react on 
the minds which handle these forms of truth. 

Oh, you need'not tell me that Messrs. A. and 

B. are the most gracious, unassuming people in the 
world, and yet preeminent in the ranges of science I 
am referring to. I know that as well as you. But 
mark this which I am going to say once for all : If I 
had not force (Miough to project a principle full in 
the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which 
seem to contradict it, I would think only in single 
file from this day forward. A rash man, once visit- 
ing a ct'rtain noted institution at South Boston, 
ventured to express the sentiment, that man is a 
rational being. An old woman who was an attendant 
in the Idiot School contradicted the statement, and 
appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove 
it. The rash man stuck to his hasty generalization, 
notwithstanding. 

[ It is my desire to be useful to those with 

whom I am associated in my daily relations. I not 
unfrequently practise the divine art of music in com- 
pany with our landlady's daughter,. who, as I men- 
tioned before, is the owner of an accordion. Having 
myself a well-marked barytone voice of more than 
half an octave in compass, I sometimes add my 
vocal powers to her execution of 

" Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom," 



64 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

not, however, unless her mother or some other d *- 
creet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation 
or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest 
in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes 
called B. F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation 
of that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity 
and convenience, adopted by some of his betters. 
My acquaintance with the French language is very 
imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but in 
Paris, which is awkward, as B. F. devotes himself to 
it with the peculiar advantage of an Alsaeian teacher. 
The boy, I think, is doing well, between us, notwith- 
standing. The following is an uncorrected French 
exercise, written -by this young gentleman. His 
mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities ; 
though, being unacquainted with the French lan- 
guage, her judgment cannot be considered final. 

Le Eat des Salons a Lecture. 

Ce rat 91 est un animal fort singulier. H a deux pattes de der- 
riere sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il fait 
usage pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a la peau noire pour le 
plupart, et porte un cercle blanchatre autour de son cou. On le 
trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, digere, s'il y a 
de quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue, dort, et rcnfle 
quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblant de lire. On ne sail pag 
s'il a une autre gite que 9elk. II a I'air d'une bete tres stupide, 
mais 11 est d'une sagacity et d'une vitesse extraordinaire quand il 
s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne salt pas pourquoi il 
lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idees. II vocalise rarement, 
mais en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux divers. II porte ud 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. (35 

crayon dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec lequel II fait dea 
marques sur les bords des journaux et des livres, semblable aux 
suivans : ! ! ! — Bah ! Pooh ! II ne faut pas cependant les prendre 
pour des signes d'intelHgence. II ne vole pas, ordinairement ; il 
fait rarement meme des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de cha- 
peau, parceque son chapeau a toujours un caract^re specifique. On 
ne sait pas au juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier etait d'avia 
que c'ctait de I'odeur du cuir des reliures ; ce qu'on dit d'etre une 
nourriture animale fort saine, et peu ch^re. II vit bien longtems. 
Enfin il meure, en laissant k ses heritiers une carte du Salon k 
Lecture ou il avait existe pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il re- 
vient toutes les nuits, apres la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le 
voir, dit on, a minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal 
du soir, et ayant k sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain 
on trouve des caracteres inconnus sur les bords du journal- Ce 
qui prouve que le spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les 
Professeurs de Cambridge sont des imbe9iles qui ne savent rien 
du tout, du tout. 

I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, 
or allowed to be touched in any way, is not discredit- 
able to B. F. You observe that he is acquiring a 
knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is 
learning French. Fathers of families in moderate cir- 
cumstances will find it profitable to their children, and 
an economical mode of instruction, to set them to 
revising and amending this boy's exercise. The pas- 
sage was originally taken from the " Histoire Na- 
turelle des Betes Ruminans et Rongeurs, Bipedes et 
Autres," lately published in Paris. This was trans- 
lated into English and published in London. It was 
republished at Great Pedlington, with notes and 



CG THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

additions by the American editor. The notes con 
sist of an interrogation-mark on page 53d, and & 
reference (p. 127th) to another book " edited " by the 
same hand. The additions consist of the editors 
name on the title-page and back, with a complete 
and authentic list of said editor's honorary titles' 
in the first of these localities. Our boy translated 
the translation back into French. This may be com- 
pared with the original, to be found on Shelf 13, Di- 
vision X, of the Public Library of this metropolis.] 

— — Some of you boarders ask me from time to 
time why I don't A\Tite a story, or a novel, or some- 
thing of that kind. Instead of answering each one 
of you separately, I will thank you to step up into 
the wholesale department for a few moments, where 
I deal in answers by the piece and by the bale. 

That every articulately-speaking human being has 
in him stuff for one novel in three volumes duodecimo 
has long been with me a cherished belief. It has 
been maintained, on the other hand, that many per- 
sons cannot write more than one novel, — that all 
after that are likely to be failures. — Life is so much 
more tremendous a thing in its heights and depths 
than any transcript of it can be, that all records of 
human experience are as so many bound herbaria to 
the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breath- 
ing, fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, 
death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest and 
the prairies. All we can do with books of human 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 67 

experience is to make them alive again with some- 
thing borrowed from our own lives. We can make 
a book alive for us just in proportion to its resem- 
blance in essence or in form to our own experience. 
Now an author's first novel is naturally drawn, to 
a great extent, from his personal experiences ; that 
is, is a literal copy of nature under various slight dis- 
guises. But the moment the author gets out of his 
personality, he must have the creative power, as well 
as the narrative art and the sentiment, in order to 
tell a living story ; and this is rare. 

Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life- 
, story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best 
thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded 
with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a 
few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. 
Oftentimes a single cradling gets then?^all, and after 
that the poor man's labor is only rewarded by mud 
and worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as 
an individual of the human family, could write one 
novel or story at any rate, if I would. 

Why don't I, then ? — Well, there are several 

reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all 
my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper 
medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme 
and the harmonies of musical language, the play of 
fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, 
so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that 
hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous 



68 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A 
beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected 
by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad 
snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that, 
were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would 
be unendurable — in the opinion of the ladies. 

Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all 
my friends. I should like to know if all story-tellers 
do not do this ? Now I am afraid all my friends 
would not bear showing up very well ; for they have 
an average share of the common weakness of hu- 
manity, which I am pretty certain would come out. 
Of all that have told stories among us there is hard- 

m 

ly one I can recall who has not drawn too faithfully 
some living portrait that might better have been 
spared. 

Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible 
I might be too dull to write such a story as I should 
wish to write. 

And finally, I think it very likely I shall write a 
story one of these days. Don't be surprised at any 
time, if you see me coming out with " The School- 
mistress," or " The Old Gentleman Opposite." [ Ou? 
schoolmistress and our old gentleman that sits oppo 
site had left the table before I said this.] I want mj 
glory for writing the same discounted now, on the 
spot, if you please. I will write when I get ready. 
How many people live on the reputation of the rep- 
utation they might have made ! 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 69 

-I saw you smiled when I spoke about the 



possibility of my being too dull to write a good 
story. I don't pretend to know what you meant by 
it, but I take occasion to make a remark w^hich may 
hereafter prove of value to some among you. — When 
one of us who has been led by native vanity or 
senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed 
of talent amves at the full and final conclusion that 
he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquil- 
lizing and blessed convictions that Can enter a mor- 
tal's mind. All our failures, our short-comings, our 
strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts 
are lifted^ from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like 
Christian's pack, at the feet of that- Omni9otence 
which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of 
high intelligence, — with which one look may over- 
flow us in some wider sphere of being. 

How sweetly and honestly one said to me the 

other day, " I hate books ! " A gentleman, — singu- 
larly free from affectations, — not learned, of course, 
but of perfect breeding, which is often so much 
better than learning, — by no means dull, in the sense 
of knowledge of the world and society, but certainly 
not clever either in the arts or sciences, — his com- 
pany is pleasing to all who know him. I did not 
recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so 
distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless 
acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. 
In fact, I think there are a great many gentlemen 



70 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

and others, who read with a mark to keep their 
place, that really " hate books," but never had the 
wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it. [Entre 
nous, I always read with a mark.] 

We get into a way of thinking as if what we 
call an " intellectual man " was, as a matter of 
course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of 
book-learning, and one-tenth himself 'But even if 
he is actually so compounded, he need not read 
much. Society is a strong solution of books. It 
draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, 
i as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If I 
w^ere a prince, I w^ould hire or buy a private literary 
tea-pot, in which I would steep all the leaves of new 
books that promised well. The infusion would do 
for me without the vegetable fibre. You understand 
me ; I would have a person whose sole business 
should be to read day and night, and talk to me 
whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I 
would have : a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive 
fellow ; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full 
of books about it, which he can use handily, and the 
same of all useful arts and sciences ; know^s all the 
common plots of plays and novels, and the stock 
company of characters that are continually coming 
on in new costume ; can give you a criticism of an 
octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can de- 
pend on it ; cares for nobody except for the virtue 
there is in what he says ; delights in taking off lig 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 7x 

wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalm- 
ing and unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yel' 
he is as tender and reverential to all that bears the 
mark of genius, — that is, of a new influx of truth or 
beauty, — as a nun over her missal. In short, he 
is one of those men that know everything except 
how to make a living. Him would I keep on the 
square next my own royal compartment on life's 
chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn, 
in the shape of a comely and wase young woman, 
wliom he would of course take — to wife. For all 
contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, 
I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, " put 
him through " all the material part of life ; see him 
sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, 
just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked, — with 
the privilege of shutting it off at will. 

A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like 
a harp, with about a dozen ringing intelligences, 
each answering to some chord of the macrocosm. 
They do well to dine together once in a while. A 
dinner-party made up of such elements is the last 
triumph of civilization over barbarism. Nature and 
art combine to charm the senses ; the equatorial zone 
of the system is soothed by well-studied artifices; 
the faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural 
attitudes ; you see wisdom in slippers and science in 
a short jacket. 

The whole force of conversation depends on how 



72 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess- 
players have to play their game out ; nothing short 
of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their 
dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that 
noble-' game I White stands well enough, so far as 
you can see ; but Red says, Mate in six moves ; — 
White looks, — nods ; — the game is over. Just so in 
talking with first-rate men; especially when they 
are good-natured and expansive, as they are apt to 
be at table. That blessed clairvoyance which sees 
into things without opening them, — that glorious 
license, which, having shut the door and driven the 
reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majestic 
virgin ! to get off from her pedestal and drop her 
academic poses, and take a festive garland and the 
vacant place on the medius lectiis, — that carnival- 
shower of questions and replies and comments, 
large axioms bowled over the mahogany like bomb- 
shells from professional mortars, and explosive wit 
dropping its trains of many-colored fire, and the 
mischief-making rain of bon-bons pelting everybody 
that shows himself, — the picture of a truly intellec- 
tual banquet is one which the old Divinities might 

well have attempted to reproduce in their 

" Oh, oh, oh ! " cried the young fellow whom 



they call John, — " that is from one of your lectures ! " 
I know it, I replied, — I concede it, I confess it, 1 
proclaim it. 

" The trail of the serpent is over them all ! ** 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 73 

AU lecturers, aU professors, all schoolmasters, have 
ruts and grooves in their minds into which their con- 
versation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in 
riding through the woods of a still June evening, 
suddenly feel that you had passed into a war^n stra- 
lum of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill 
.ayer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in 
cleaving the green waters of the* Back Bay,— where 
the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating 
the " Metropolitan " boat-clubs,— find yourself in a 
tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous 
warm-bath a little underdone, through which your 
glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back 
to the cold realities of full-sea temperat'Lre ? Just 
so, in talking with any of the characters above re- 
ferred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden change 
in the style of the conversation. The lack-lustre eye 
rayless as a Beacon-Street door-plate in August, all 
at once fills with light; the face flings itself wide 
open like the church-portals when the bride and 
bridegroom enter ; the little man grows in stature 
before your eyes, like the small prisoner with hair on 
end, beloved yet dreaded of early childhood; you 
were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile,-~you 
have a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before 

you ! Nothing but a streak out of a fifty-dollar 

lecture. As when, at some unlooked-for moment, 

the mighty fountain-column springs into the air be- 
fore the astonished passer-by,— silver-footed, dia- 



74 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKF AST-TABLE. 

mond-crowned, rainbo\v-scarfed,-T-from the bo»,om 
of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet batra- 
chians at home, and the epigrams of a less amiable 
and less elevated order of reptilia in other latitudes. 

Who was that person that was so abused 

some time since for saying that in the conflict of two 
races our sympathies naturally go with the higbar? 
No matter who he was. Now look at what is going 
on in India, — a white, superior "Caucasian" race, 
against a dark-skinned, inferior, but still " Caucasian " 
race, — and where are English and American sympa- 
thies ? We can't stop to settle all the doubtful 
questions ; all we know is, that the brute nature is 
sure to come out most strongly in the lower race, and 
it is the general law that the human side of humanity 
should treat the brutal side as it does the same nature 
in the inferior animals, — tame it or crush it. The 
India mail brings stories of women and children 
outraged and murdered ; the royal stronghold is in 
the hands of the babe-killers. England takes down 
the Map of the World, which she has girdled with 
empire, and makes a correction thus : DnLni ^ Dele, 
The civilized world says, Amen. 

Do not think, because I talk to you of many 

subjects briefly, that I should not find it much lazier 
work to take each one of them and dilute it down 
to an essay. Borrow some of my old college themes 
and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the 
Homeric heroes did with their melas oinos^ — that 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 75 

black sweet, syrupy wine (?) which they used to 
alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream. 
[Could it have been vie/asses, as Webster and his 
provincials spell it, — or Molossa's^ as dear old smat- 
tering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cot- 
ton Mather, has it in the "Magnalia"? Ponder 
thereon, ye small antiquaries who make barrt- 
door-fowl flights of learning in " Notes and Queries ! " 
— ye Historical Societies, in one of whose venerable 
triremes I, too, ascend the stream of time, while 
other hands tug at the oars! — ye Amines of parasiti- 
cal literature, who pick up your grains of native- 
grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon less 
honest fare, until, like the great minds Goethe 
speaks of, you have "made a Golgotha" of your 
pages I — ponder thereon I] 

Before you go, this morning, I want to read 

you a copy of verses. You will understand by the 
title that they are written in an imaginary character. 
I don't doubt they will fit some family-man well 
enough. I send it forth as " Oak Hall " projects a 
coat, on a priori grounds of conviction that it will 
suit somebody. There is no loftier illustration of 
faith than this. It believes that a soul has been clad 
in flesh ; that tender parents have fed and nurturecf 
it ; that its mysterious compares or frame-work has 
survived its myriad exposures and reached the stature 
of maturity ; that the Man, now self-determining, has 
given in his adhesion to the traditions and habits of 



76 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEE AKFAST-T ABIE. 

the race in favor of artificial clothing ; that he will, 
having all the world to choose from, select the very 
locality where this audacious generalization has been 
acted upon. It builds a garment cut to the pattern 
of an Idea, and trusts that Nature will model a ma- 
terial shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in every 
seam, and its pockets are fuU of inspiration. — Now 
hear the verses. 

THE OLD MAN DREAMS. 

O for one hour of youthful joy 1 

Give back my twentieth spring I 
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy 

Than reign a gray-beard king I 

Off with the wrinkled spoils of age 1 

Away with learning's crown I 
Tear out life's wisdom-written page, 

And dash Its trophies down I 

One moment let my life-blood stream 

From boyhood's fount of flame I 
Give me one giddy, reeling dream 

Of life all love and fame I 

— ^My listening angel heard the prayer. 

And calmly smiling, said, 
" If I but touch thy silvered hair, 

Thy hasty wish hath sped. 

** But Is there nothing In thy track 
To bid thee fondly stay, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 77 

While the swift seasons hurry back 
To find the wished-for day ? " 

— Ah, truest soul of womankind ! 

Without thee, what were Hfe ? 
One bliss I cannot leave behind : . 

I'll take— my— precious— wife 1 

— The angel took a sapphire pen 

And wrote in rainbow dew, 
** The man would be a boy a^ain, 

And be a husband too I ** 

— "And is there nothing yet unsaid 

Before the change appears ? 
Remember, all their gifts have fled 

With those dissolving years 1 " 

Why, yes ; for memory would recall 

My fond paternal joys ; 
I could not bear to leave them all ; 

I'll take — my — girl — and — boys I 

The smiling angel dropped his pen, — 

" Why this will never do ; 
The man would be a boy again, 

And be a father too I '* 

And so T laughed, — my laughter woke 

The household with its noise, — 
And wrote my dream, when morning broke, 

To please the gray-haired boys. 



78 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAJLE. 



IV. 

[I AM SO well pleased with my boarding-house that 
I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of 
course I shall have a great many conversations to 
report, and they will necessarily be of different tone 
and on different subjects. The talks are like the 
breakfasts, — sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes 
diy. You must take them as they come. How can 
I do what all these letters ask me to ? No. 1. 
want serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter 
smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes ; wants 
me to tell a " good storey " which he has copied out 
for me. (I suppose two letters before the word 
" good " refer to some Doctor of Divinity who told 
the story.) No. 3. (in female hand) — more poetry. 
No. 4. wants something that would be of us-e to a 
practical man. (Prahctical mahn he probably pro- 
nounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented) — 
" more sentiment," — " heart's outpourings." 

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but 
report such remarks as I happen to have made at 
our breakfast-table. Their character will depend on 
many accidents, — a good deal on the particular per 
sons in the company to whom they were addressed. 
It so happens that those which follow were mainly 
intended for the divinity-student and the school- 
mistress ; though others, whom I need not mention, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEJIAKF AST-TABLE. 



79 



B?- V fit to interfere, with more or less propriety, in 
the conversation. This is one of my privileges as a 
talker ; and of course, if I was not talking for our 
whole company, I don't expect all the readers of this 
"periodical to be interested in my notes of what 
was said. Still, I think there may be a few that 
will rather like this vein, — possibly prefer it to a live- 
lier one, — serious young men, and young women 

generally, in life's roseate parenthesis from 

years of age to inclusive. 

Another privilege of talking is to misquote. — Of 
course it wasn't Proserpina that actually cut the yel- 
low hair, — but Iris. (As I have since told you) it 
was the former lady's regular business, but Dido had 
used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood 
firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian 
Here — Juno, in Latin — sent down Iris instead. But 
I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentle- 
men that do the heavy articles for the celebrated 
*' Oceanic Miscellany " misquoted Campbell's line 
without any excuse. " Waft us home the message " 
of course it ought to be. Will he be duly grateful 
for the correction ?] 

The more we study the body and the mind, 

the more we find both to be governed, not by^ but 
according to laws, such as we observe in the larger 
universe. — You think you know all about walkings — 
don't you, now ? Well, how do you suppose your 
ower limbs are held to your body? They are 



80 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sucked up by two cupping vessels, (" cotyloid "— 
cup-like — cavities,) and held there as long as you 
Jive, and longer. At any rate, you think you move 
them backward and forward at such a rate as your 
will determines, don't you ? On the contrary, they 
swing just as any other pendulums swing, at a fixed 
rate, determined by their length. You can alter this 
by muscular power, as you can take hold of the pen- 
dulum of a clock and make it move faster or slower ; 
but your ordinary gait is timed by the same mech- 
anism as the movements of the solar system. 

[My friend, the Professor, told me all this, referring 
me to certain German physiologists by the name of 
Weber for proof of the facts, which, however, he 
said he had often verified. I appropriated it to my 
own use ; what can one do better than this, when 
one has a friend that tells him anything worth re- 
membering ? 

The Professor seems to think that man and the 
general powers of the universe are in partnership. 
Some one was saying that it had cost nearly half a 
million to move the Leviathan only so far as they 
had got it already. — Why, — said the Professor, — 
they might have hired an earthquake for less 
money !] 

Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom 
of many of the bodily movements, just so thought 
may be supposed to have its regular cycles. Such 
or such a thought comes round periodically, in its 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 31 

turn. Accidental suggestions, however, so far inter- 
fere with the regular cycles, that we may find them 
practically beyond our power of recognition. Take 
all this for what it is worth, but at any rate you will 
agree that there are certain particular thoughts that 
do not come up once a day, nor once a week, but 
that a year would hardly go round without your 
having them pass through your mind. Here is one 
which comes up at intervals in this way. Some one 
speaks of it, and there is an instant and eager smile 
of assent in the listener or listeners. Yes, indeed ; 
they have often been struck by it. 

All at once a conviction flashes through us that we 
have been in the same precise circumstances as at the 
present instant^ once or many times before. 

O, dear, yes ! — said one of the company, — every- 
body has had that feeling. 

The landlady didn't know anything about such 
notions ; it was an idee in folks' heads, she expected. 

The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of 
way, that she knew the feeling well, and didn't like 
to experience it ; it made her think she was a ghost, 
sometimes. 

The young fellow whom they call John said he 
knew all about it ; he had just lighted a cheroot the 
other day, when a tremendous conviction all at once 
came over him that he had done just that same thing 
ever so many times before. I looked severely at 
him, and his countenance immediately fell — on the 

4* 



82 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

side toivard me ; I cannot answer for the other, for 
he can wink and laugh with either half of his face 
without the other half's knowing it. 

1 have noticed — I went on to say — the fol- 
lowing circumstances connected with the^^e sudden 
impressions. First, that the condition which seems 
to be the duplicate of a former one is often very 
trivial, — one that might have presented itself a hun- 
dred times. Secondly, that the impression is very 
evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by 
any voluntary effort, at least after any time has 
elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disinclination to 
record the circumstances, and a sense of incapacity 
to reproduce the state of mind in words. Fourthly, 
I have often felt that the duplicate condition had not 
only occurred once before, but that it was familiar 
and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I have had the 
same convictions in my dreams. 

How do I account for it ? — Why, there are several 
ways that I can mention, and you may take your 
choice. The first is that which the young lady 
hinted at; — that these flashes are sudden recollec- 
tions of a previous existence. I don't believe that ; 
for I remember a poor student I used to know told 
me he had such a conviction one day when he was 
blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever 
lived in another world where they use Day and Mar- 
tin. 

Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 33 

being a double organ, its hemispheres working to- 
gether like the two eyes, accounts for it. One of 
the hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the 
small interval between the perceptions of the nimble 
and the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long 
period, and therefore the second perception appears 
to be the copy of another, ever so old. But even al- 
lowing the centre of perception to be double, T can see 
no good reason for supposing this indefmite length- 
ening of the time, nor any analogy that bears it out. 
It seems to me most likely that the coincidence of 
circumstances is very partial, but that we take this 
partial resemblance for identity, as we occasionally 
do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture 
of circumstances is so far like some preceding one 
that we accept it as exactly the same, just as we 
accost a stranger occasionally, mistaking him for a 
friend. The apparent similarity may be owing per- 
haps, quite as much to the mental state at the time, 
as to the outward circumstances. 

Here is another of these curiously recurring 

remarks. I have said it, and heard it many times, 
and occasionally met with something like it in books, 
— somewhere in Bulwer^s novels, I think, and in one 
of the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know. 

Memory^ imagination^ old sentiments and asrocia" 
tions, are more readily reached through the sense of 
8MELL than by almost any other channel. 

Of course the particular odors which act upon 



84 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

each person's susceptibilities differ. — O, yes ! I will 
tell you some of mine. The smell of phosphorus is 
one of them. During a year or two of adolescence 
I used to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and 
as about that time I had my little aspirations and 
passions like another, some of these things got mixed 
up with each other: orange-colored fumes of nitrous 
acid, and visions as bright and transient ; reddening 
litmus-paper, and blushing cheeks ; — cheu ! 

" Soles occidere et redire possunt,'* 

but there is no reagent that will redden the faded 

roses of eighteen hundred and spare them ! 

But, as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train of 
associations in an instant; its luminous vapors with 
their penetrating odor throw me into a trance ; it 
comes to me in a double sense "trailing clouds of 
glory." Only the confounded Vienna matches, ohne 
phosphor-g-eruch, have worn my sensibilities a little. 

Then there is the marigold. When I was of 
smallest dimensions, and wont to ride impacted 
between the knees of fond parental pair, we would 
sometimes cross the bridge to the next village-town 
and stop opposite a low, brown, " gambrel-roofed " 
cottage. Out of it would come one Sally, sister of 
its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad- 
voiced, and, bending over her flower-bed, would 
gather a " posy," as she called it, for the little boy. 
Sally lies in the churchyard with a slab of blue slate 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 35 

at her head, lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within 
the last few years. Cottage, garden-beds, posies, 
grenadier-like rows of seedling onions, — stateliest of 
vegetables,— all are gone, but the breath of a mari 
gold brings them all back to me. 

Perhaps the herb everlastings the fragrant immor- 
telle of our autumn fields, has the most suir^estive 
odor to me of all those that set me dreaming. I can 
hardly describe the strange thoughts and emotions 
that come to me as I inhale the aroma of its pale, 
dry, rustling flowers. A something it has of sepul- 
chral spicery, as if it had been brought from the core 
of some great pyramid, where it had lain on the 
breast of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of 
immortality in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so 
long in its lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why 
it fills my eyes with tears and carries me in blissful 
thought to the banks of asphodel that border the 
River of Life. 

1 should not have talked so much about these 

personal susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to 
make about them which I believe is a new one. It is 
this. There may be a physical reason for the strange 
connection between the sense of smell and the mind. 
The olfactory nerve—- so my friend, the Professor, tells 
me— is the only one directly connected with the hem- 
ispheres of the brain, the parts in which, as we have 
every reason to believe, the intellectual processes are 
performed. To speak more truly the olfactory 



8G THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

" nerve " is not a nerve at all, he says, but a pari of 
the brain, in intimate connection with its anterior 
lobes. Whether this anatomical arrangement is at 
the bottom of the facts I have mentioned, I will not 
decide, but it is curious enough to be worth remem- 
bering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source of 
suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now 
the Professor assures me that you will find tlie nerve 
of taste has no immediate connection with the brain 
proper, but only with the. prolongation of the spinal 
cord. 

[The old gentleman opposite did not pay much 
attention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But 
while I was speaking about the sense of smell he 
nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in 
getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. 
Then he lurched a little to the other side, and after 
much tribulation at last extricated an ample round 
snuff-box. I looked as he opened it and felt for the 
wonted pugil. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean 
lying therein. I made the manual sign understood 
of all mankind that use the precious dust, and 
presently my brain, too, responded to the long unused 

stimulus. O boys, — that were, — actual papas and 

possible grandpapas, — some of yon with crowns 
like billiard-balls, — some in locks of sable silvered, 
and some of silver sabled, — do you remember, as you 
doze over this, those after-dinners at the Trois Freres, 
when the Scotch-plaided snuff-box went round, and 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRKAKF AST-TABLE. 87 

the dry Lundy-Foot tickled its way alon£]^ into oui 
happy sensoria ? Then it was tliat the Chambcrtin 
or the Clos Vougeot came in, slumbering in its straw 
cradle. And one among you,— do you remember 
how he would have a bit of ice always in his Bur- 
gundy, and sit tinkling it against the sides of the 
bubble-like glass, saying that he was hearing the 
cow-bells as he used to hear them, when the deep- 
breathing kine came home at twilight from the 
huckleberry pasture, in the old home a thousand 
leagues towards the sunset?] 

Ah me I what strains and strophes of unwritten 
verse pulsate through my soul when I open a certain 
closet in the ancient house where I was born I On 
its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-marjoram 
and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip; 
there apples were stored until their seeds should grow 
black, which happy period there were sharp little 
milk-teeth always ready to anticipate; there peaches 
lay in the dark, thii>king of the sunshine they had 
lost, until, like the hearts of saints that dream of 
heaven in their sorrow, they grew fragrant as the 
breath of an£:els. The odorous echo of a score of 
dead summers lingers yet in those dim recesses. 

Do I remember Byron's line about " striking 

the electric chain " ? — To be sure I do. I sometimes 
think the less the hint that stirs the automatic ma- 
chinery of association, the more easily this moves us. 
What can be more trivial than that old story of 



88 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

opening the folio Shakspeare that nsed to lie in some 
ancient English hall and finding the flakes of Christ- 
n:as pastry between its leaves, shut up in them per- 
haps a hundred years ago ? And, lo ! as one looks on 
these poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe 
changes in the twinkling of an eye ; old George the 
Second is back again, and the elder Pitt is coming 
into power, and General Wolfe is a fine, promising 
young man, and over the Channel they are pulling 
the Sieur Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and 
across the Atlantic the Indians are tomahawking 
Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at Fort William 
Henry ; all the dead people who have been in the 
dust so long — even to the stout-armed cook that 
made the pastry — are alive again ; the planet un- 
winds a hundred of its luminous coils, and the pre- 
cession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of 
heaven ! And all this for a bit of pie-crust! 

1 will thank you for that pie, — said the pro 

voking young fellow whom I have named repeatedly. 
He looked at it for a moment, and put his hands to 
his eyes as if moved. — I was thinking, — he said in- 
distinctly 

How? What is't? — said our landlady. 

— I was thinking — said he — who was king of 
England when this old pie was baked, — and it made 
me feel bad to think how Ions: he must have been 
dead. 

[Our "landlady is a decent body, poor, and a widow, 



THE AUTOCRAT 01 THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. g^ 

of course ; celd va sans dire. She told me her story 
once ; it was as if a grain of corn that had been 
ground and bolted had tried to individualize itself by 
a special narrative. There was the wooing and the 
wedding,— the start in life, — the disappointment, — 
the children she had buried, — the struggle against 
fate, — ^the dismantling of life, first of its small lux- 
uries, and then of its comforts, — the broken spirits, — 
the altered character of the one on whom she leaned, 
— and at last the death that came and drew the black 
curtain between her and all her earthly hopes. 

I never laughed at my landlady after she had told 
me her story, but I often cried, — not those pattering 
tears that run off the eaves upon our neighbors' 
grounds, the stillicvlium of self-conscious sentiment, 
but those which steal noiselessly through their con- 
duits until they reach the cisterns lying round about 
the heart ; those tears that we weep inwardly with 
unchanging features; — such I did shed for her often 
when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged 
at her soul with their red-hot pincers.] 

Young man, — I said, — the pasty you speak lightly 
of is not old, but courtesy to those who labor to serve 
us, especially if they are of the weaker sex, is very 
old, and yet well worth retaining. May I recommend 
to you the following caution, as a guide, whenever 
you are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet 
—if you are handling an editor or politician, it is su- 
perfluous advice. I take it from the back of one of 



90 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

those little French toys which contain pasteboard 
figures moved by a small running stream of fine 
sand; Benjamin Franklin will translate it for yoii : 
" Quoiqii'elle soil trcs solidement rnontee, ilfaut ne pas 
BRUTAijsER la machine,^'' — I will thank you for the 
pie, if you please. 

[I took more of it than was- good for me, — as 
much as 85", I should think, — and had an indiges- 
tion in consequence. While I was suffering from it, 
I wrote some sadly desponding poems, and a theo- 
logical essay which took a very melancholy view of 
creation. When I got better I labelled them all 
" Pie-crust," and laid them by as scarecrows and 
solemn warnings. I have a number of books on my 
shelves that I should like to label with some such 
title ; but, as they have great names on their title- 
pages, — Doctors of Divinity, some of them, — it 
wouldn't do.] 

My friend, the Professor, whom I have men- 
tioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that 
somebody had been abusing him in some of the jour- 
nals of his callins:. I told him that I didn't doubt 
he deserved it ; that I hoped he did deserve a little 
abuse occasionally, and would for a number of years 
to come ; that nobody could do anything to make 
his neighbors wiser or better without being liable to 
abuse for it; especially that people hated to have 
their little mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had 
been doing something of the kind. — The Professor 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. gj 

imiled. — Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. 
It will not take many years to bring you to the period 
of life when men, at least the majority of writing 
and talking men, do nothing but praise. Men, like 
peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before 
they begin to decay. I don't know what it is, — 
whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or 
whether it is thorough experience of the thankless- 
ness of critical honesty, — but it is a fact, that most 
writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired 
of finding fault at about the time when they are be- 
ginning to grow old. As a general thing, I would 
not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if 
he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At 
thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big let- 
ters upon the walls of this tenement of life ; twenty 
years later we have carved it, or shut up our jack- 
knives. Then we are ready to help others, and care 
less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in 
our way. So I am glad you have a little life left ; 
you will be saccharine enough in a few years. 

Some of the softening eflbcts of advancing 

age have struck me very much in what I have heard 
or seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the 
sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you 
know that in the gradual passage from maturity to 
helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have 
a period in which they are gentle and placid as 
young children ? I have heard it said, but I cannot 



92 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE. 

be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, 
Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his 
old age. An old man, whose studies had been of 
the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear little 
nursery-stories read over and over to him. One who 
saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years de- 
scribes him as very gentle in his aspect and de- 
meanor. I remember a person of singularly stern 
and lofty bearing who became remarkably gi-acious 
and easy in all his ways in the later period of his life. 
And that leads me to say that men often remind 
me of pears in their way of coming to maturity. 
Some are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles, 
and must be made the most of, for their day is soon 
over. Some come into their perfect condition late, 
like the autumn kinds, and they last better than the 
summer fruit. And some, that, like the Winter- 
Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the 
rest have had their season, get their glow and per- 
fume long after the frost and snow have done their 
worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms ; 
the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may be 
an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you 
picked up beneath the same bough in August may 
have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. Milton 
was a Saint- Germain with a graft of the roseate 
Early- Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet 
skinned old Chaucer was an Easter-Beurrd ; the buds 
of a new summer were swelling when he ripened. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 93 

-There is no power I envy so much — said the 



divinity-student — as that of seeing analogies and 
making comparisons. I don't understand how it is 
that some minds are continually coupling thoughts 
or objects that seem not in the least related to each 
other, until all at once they are put in a certain 
light, and you wonder that you did not always see 
that they were as like as a pair of twins. It appears 
to me a sort of miraculous gift. 

[He is rather a nice young man, and I think haa 
an appreciation of the higher mental qualities re- 
markable for one of his years and training. I try his 
head occasionally as housewives try eggs, — give it 
an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so 
to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, 
or only contains lifeless albumen. 

You call it viiracidons^ — I replied, — tossing the ex- 
pression with ray facial eminence, a little smartly, I 
fear. — Two men are walking by the poly phi oesboean 
ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with which 
he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and 
the other nothing but his hands, which will hardly 
hold water at all, — and you call the tin cup a mirac- 
ulous possession ! It is the ocean that is the miracle, 
my infant apostle ! Nothing is clearer than that all 
things are in all things, and that just according to 
the intensity and exten.^ion of our mental being we 
shall see the many in the one and the one in the 
many. Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying 



94 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

when he made his speech about the ocean, — the child 
and the pebbles, you know ? Did he mean to speak 
slightingly of a pebble ? Of a spherical solid which 
stood sentinel over its compartment of space before 
the stone that became the pyramids had grown solid, 
and has watched it until now! A body which knows 
all the currents of force that traverse the globe ; 
which holds by invisible threads to the ring of Saturn 
and the belt of Orion ! A body from the contem- 
plation of which an archangel could infer the entire 
inorganic universe as the simplest of corollaries! A 
throne of the all-pervading Deity, who has guided its 
every atom since the rosary of heaven was strung 
with beaded stars ! 

So, — -to return to our walk by the ocean, — if all 
that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, 
all that maddening narcotics have driven through the 
brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the 
fancies of women, — if the dreams of colleges and 
convents and boarding-schools, — if every human feel- 
ing that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or 
groans, should bring all their innumerable images, 
such as come with every hurried heart-beat, — the 
epic which held them all, though its letters filled the 
zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean 
of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the 
universe. 

[The divinity-student honored himself by the way 
in which he received this. He did not swallow it at 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE Bl^EAKF AST-TABLE. 95 

once, neither did he reject it; but he took it as a 
pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off with him 1 1 
his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his 
leisure.] 

Here is another remark made for his especial 

benefit. — There is a natural tendency in many per- 
sons to run their adjectives together in triads^ as I 
have heard them called, — thus: He was honorable, 
courteous, and brave ; she was graceful, pleasing, 
and virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this ; I 
think it \v^as Bulwer who said you could separate a 
paper in the " Rambler " into three distinct essays. 
Many of our writers show the same tendency, — my 
friend, the Professor, especially. Some think it is in 
humble imitation of Johnson, — some that it is for 
the sake of the stately sound only. I don't think 
they get to the bottom of it. It is, I suspect, an 
iristinctive and involuntary effort of the mind to 
present a thought or image with the three dimensions 
that belong to every solid, — an unconscious handling 
of an idea as if it had length, breadth, and thickness. 
It is a great deal easier to say this than to prove it, 
and a great deal easier to dispute it than to disprove 
it. But mind this : the more we observe and study, 
the wider we find the range of the automatic and 
instinctive principles in body, mind, and morals, and 
the narrower the limits of the self-determining con- 
Bcious movement. 

«— ~] have often seen piano-foite players and 



()Q THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

singers make such strange motions over their in- 
struments or song-books that I wanted to laugh at 
them. " Where did our friends pick up all these 
fine ecstatic airs ? " I would say to myself. Then I 
would remember My Lady in " Marriage a la Mode," 
and amuse myself with thinking how affectation was 
the same thing in Hogarth's time and in our own. 
But one day I bought me a Canary-bird and hung 
him up in a cage at my window. By-and-by ho 
found himself at home, and began to pipe his little 
tunes ; and there he was, sure enough, swimming 
and waving about, with all the drooj)ings and lift- 
ings and languishing side-turnings of the head that 1 
had laughed at. And now I should like to ask, 
Who taught him all this? — and me, through him, 
that the foolish head was not the one swinorinof itself 
from side to side and bowing and nodding over the 
music, but that other which was passing its shallow 
and self-satisfied judgment on a creature made of 
finer clay than the frame which carried that same 
head upon its shoulders ? 

Do you want an image of the human will, or 

the self-determining principle, as compared wdth its 
prearranged and impassable restrictions ? A drop 
of water, imprisoned in a crystal ; you may see such 
a one in any mineralogical collection. One little 
fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the solid 



universe ! 



Weaken moral obligations ? — No, not weaken, 




THE POOR HEIiATTON 



TUE AUTOCRAT OK THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 97 

but define them. When I preach that sermon I 
spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay down 
some principles not fully recognized in some of your 
text-books. 

1 should have to begin with one most formidable 
preliminary. You saw an article the other day in 
one of the journals, perhaps, in which some old 
Doctor or other said quietly that patients were very 
apt to be fools and cowards. But a great many of 
the clergyman's patients are not only fools and 
cowards, but also liars. 

[Immense sensation at the table. — Sudden retire- 
ment of the angular female in oxydated bombazine. 
Movement of adhesion — as they say in the Chamber 
of Deputies — on the part of the young fellow they 
call John. Falling of thd Bld-gentleman-opposite's 
lower jaw — (gravitation is beginning to get the 
better of him.) Our landlady to Benjamin Franklin, 
briskly, — Go to school right off, there's a good boy I 
Schoolmistress curious, — takes a quick glance at 
divinity-student. Divinity-student slightly Hushed 
draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big false- 
hood — or truth — had hit him in the forehead. My- 
self calm.] 

1 should not make such a speech as that, you 

know, without having pretty substantial indorsers to 
fall back upon, in case my credit should be disputed. 
Will you run up stairs, Benjamin Franklin, (for B. 
F. had not gone right off, of course,) and bring down 



98 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-'i'ABLL. 

a small volume from the left upper corner of the 
right-hand shelves ? 

[Look at the precious little black, ribbed backed, 
clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo. " Desiderh 
Erasmi Colloquia. Amstelodami. Typis Ludo- 
vici Elzevirii. 1650." Various names written on 
title-page. Most conspicuous this : Gul. Cookeson 
E. Coll. Omn. Anim. 1725. Oxon. 

O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, 

Oxford, — then writing as I now write, — now in the 
dust, where I shall lie, — is this line all that remains 
to thee of earthly remembrance ? Thy name is at 
least once more spoken by living men ; — is it a plea- 
sure to thee ? Thou shalt share with me my little 
draught of immortality, — its week, its month, its 
year, — whatever it may be, — and then we will go 
together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Un- 
catalogQcd Library !] 

If you think I have used rather strong lan- 
guage, I shall have to read something to you out of 
the book of this keen and witty scholar, — the great 
Erasmus, — who "laid the egg of the Reformation 
which Luther hatched." Oh, you never read his 
Naufragium^ or " Shipwreck," did you ? Of course 
not ; for, if you had, I don't think you would have 
given me credit — or discredit — for entire originality 
in that speech of mine. That men are cowards in 
the contemplation of futurity he illustrates by the 
extraordinary antics of many on board the sinking 



THE AUTOCRAT 01 THE BREAKFAST-T.iBLE. 99 

vessel; that they are fools, by then* praying to the 
Boa, and making promises to bits of wood from the 
true cross, and all manner of similar nonsense ; that 
they are fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by this 
story : T will put it into rough English for you. — " I 
couldn't help laughing to hear one fellow bawling 
out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise 
to Saint Christopher of Paris — the monstrous statue 
in the great church there — that he would give him a 
wax taper as big as himself. < Mind what you 
promise I ' said an acquaintance that stood near him, 
poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for 
it, if you sold all your things at auction.' ' Hold 
your tongue, you donkey I' said the fellow, — but 
softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear him, 
— 'do you think I'm in earnest? If I once get my 
foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so much as 
a'tallow candle! ' " 

Now, therefore, remembering that those who have 
been loudest in their talk about the great subject of 
which we were speaking have not necessarily been 
wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have 
very often been wanting in one or two or ail of the 
qualities these words imply, I should expect to find 
a good many doctrines current in the schools which 
I should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and 
false. 

So you would abuse other people's beliefs, 

Sir, and yet not tell us your own creed! — said the 



100 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

divinit3?'-student, coloring up with a spirit for which 
I liked him all the better. 

T have a creed, — I replied ;- -none better, and 

none shorter. It is told in two words, — the two first 
of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I 
mean them. And when I compared the human will 
to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to define 
moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was 
what I intended to express: that the fluent, self- 
determining power of human beings is a very strictly 
limited agency in the universe. The chief planes 
of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization, 
education, condition. Organization may reduce the 
power of the will to nothing, as in some idiots ; and 
from this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight 
gradations. Education is only second to nature. 
Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and 
Timbuctoo to change places ! Condition does less, 
but " Give me neither poverty nor riches" was the 
prayer of Agur, and with good reason. If there is 
any improvement in modern theology, it is in getting 
out of the region of pure abstractions and taking 
these every-day working forces into account. The 
great theological question now heaving and throb- 
bing in the minds of Christian men is this : 

No, I wont talk about these things now. My re- 
marks might be repeated, and it would give my 
friends pain to see with what personal incivilities I 
phould be visited. Besides, what business has a 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. IQJ 

mere boarder to be talking about such tilings at a 
breakfast-table ? Let him make puns. To be sure, 
he was brought up among the Christian fathers, and 
learned his alphabet out of a quarto " Concilium 
Tridentinum." He has also heard many thousand 
theological lectures by men of various denomina- 
tions ; and it is not at all to the credit of these teach- 
ers, if he is not fit by this time to express an opinion 
on theological matters. 

I know well enough that there are some of you 
who had a great deal rather see me stand on my 
head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does 
not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two hit- 
ters a week, requesting him to 

. . . ., — on the strength of some youthful antic of 
nis, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent con- 
stituency of autograph-hunters to address him as a 
harlequin ? 

Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting 

to laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well enough, 
when I can. But then observe this : if the sense of 
the ridiculous is one side of an impressible nature, 
it is very well ; but if that is all there is in a man, 
he had better have been an ape at once, and so have 
stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and 
tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same ma- 
chinery of sensibility ; one is wind-power, and the 
other water-power ; that is all. I have often heard 
the Professor talk about hysterics as being Nature's 



102 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TaBLE. 

cleverest illustration of the reciprocal convertibility 
of the two states of which these acts are the mani- 
festations ; But you may see it every day in chil- 
dren ; and if you want to choke with stifled tears at 
sight of the transition, as it shows itself in older 
years, go and see Mr. Blake play Jesse Rural. 

It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to 
indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laugh 
with him just so long as he amuses them ; but if he 
attempts to be serious, they must still have their 
laugh, and so they laugh at him. There is in addi- 
tion, however, a deeper reason for this than would at 
first appear. Do you know that you feel a little 
superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether 
by making faces or verses ? Are you aware that 
you have a pleasant sense of patronizing him, when 
you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets, 
literal or literary, for your royal delight ? Now if a 
man can only be allowed to stand on a daVs, or raised 
platform, and look down on his neighbor who is ex- 
erting his talent for him, oh, it is all right I — first-rate 
performance! — and all the rest of the fine phrases. 
But if all at once the performer asks the gentleman 
to come upon the floor, and, stepping upon the plat- 
form, begins to talk down at him, — ah, that wasn't 
in the programme ! 

I have never forgotten what happened when Syd- 
ney Smith — who, as everybody knows, was an ex- 
ceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLF. 



103 



of him — ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties 
of Royalty. The " Quarterly," " so savage and tar 
tarly," came down upon him in the most contempt- 
uous style, as " a joker of jokes," a « diner-out of the 
first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at 
him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, 
sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have 
been mean enough to do to a man of his position 
and genius, or to any decent person even.— If I were 
giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two 
or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all 
means to keep his wit in the background until after 
he had made a reputation by his more solid qualities. 
And so to an actor: Hamlet first, and Bob Log-ic 
afterward^s, if you like ; but don't think, as they s^ay 
poor Liston used to, that people will be ready to 
allow that you can do anything great with Macbeth' s 
dagger after flourishing about with Paw/ Pr^^ um- 
brella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men 
look upon all who challenge their attention,— for a 
while, at least,— as beggars, and nuisances ? They 
always try to get off as cheaply as they can ; and 
the cheapest of all things they can give a literary 
man — pardon the forlorn pleasantry !— is the funny- 
hone. That is all very well so far as it goes, but 
satisfies no man, and makes a good many angry, as 
I told you on a former occasion. 

Oh, indeed, no I — I am not ashamed to make 

you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read yon 



104 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

something I have in ray desk which would probably 
make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these 
days, if you are patient with me when I am senti- 
mental and reflective ; not just now. The ludicrous 
has its place in the universe ; it is not a human in- 
vention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in 
the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long be- 
fore Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it 
is that we always consider solemnity and the ab- 
sence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as 
essential to the idea of the future life of those whom 
we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call 
blessed ! There are not a few who, even in this life, 
seem to be preparing themselves for that smileless 
eternity to which they look forward, by banishing all 
gayety from their hearts and all joyousness from 
their countenances. I meet one such in the street 
not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and edu- 
cation, but who gives me (and all that he passes) 
such a rayless and chilling look of recognition, — 
something as if he were one of Heaven's assessors, 
come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met, 
■—that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot, 
and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that 
instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail 
ofl*, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell 
me, who taught her to play with it ? 

No, no ! — give me a chance to talk to you, my fel- 
low-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall 



ittE AUTOCRAT Or 1 UK BREAKFAST-TABLE. iQa 

have any scruples about entertaining you, if I can 
do it, as well as giving you some of my prions 
thoughts, and perhaps ray sadder fancies. I know 
nothing in English or any other literature more ad- 
mirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne 
'* Every man truly lives, so long as he acts nis 

NATURE, OR some WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OP 
HIMSELF." 

I find the great thing in this world is not so much 
where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: 
To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes 
with the wind and sometimes against it, — but we 
must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is 
one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind 
that is really moving onward. It is this : that one 
cannot help using his early friends as the seaman 
uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and 
then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with 
a string of thought tied to him, and look — I am 
afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious 
compassion— to see the rate at which the string reels 
of]', while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor 
fellow! and w^e are dashing along with the white 
foam and bright sparkle at our bows ; — the rullled 
bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of 
diamonds stuck in it! But this is only the senti- 
mental side of the matter; for grow we must, if we 
outgrow all that we love. 

Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the 

5* 



X06 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying 
that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of move- 
ment by those with whom we have long been in the 
habit of comparing ourselves ; and when they once 
become stationary, we can get our reckoning from 
them with painful accuracy. We see just what we 
were when they were our peers, and can strike the 
balance between that and whatever we may feel 
ourselves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes 
be mistaken. If we change our last simile to that 
very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the har- 
bor and sailing in company for some distant region, 
we can get what we want out of it. There is one 
of our companions ; — her streamers were torn into 
rags before she had got into the open sea, then by 
and by her sails blew out of the ropes one after 
another, the waves swept her deck, and as night 
came on we left her a seeming wreck, as we flew 
under our pyramid of canvas. But lo ! at dawn she 
is still in sight, — it may* be in advance of us. Some 
deep ocean-current has been moving her on, strong, 
but silent, — yes, stronger than these noisy winds that 
pufl* our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks of 
jubilant cherubim. And when at last the black 
steam-tug with the skeleton arms, which comes out 
of the mist sooner or later and takes us all in tow, 
grapples her and goes off* panting and groaning w^th 
her, it is to that harbor where aU wrecks are refltted, 
and where, alas ! we, towering in our pride, may 
never come. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. iQi 

So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of 
old friendships, because we cannot help instituting 
comparisons between our present and former selvea 
by the aid of those who were what we were, but 
are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, in 
the race of life, than to see how many give out" in 
the first half of the course. " Commencement day " 
always reminds me of the start for the " Derby ,*' 
when the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of the 
season are brought up for trial. That day is the 
start, and life is the race. Here we are at Cam- 
bridge, and a class is just " graduating." Poor 
Harry! he was to have been there too, but he has 
paid forfeit; step out here into the grass back of the 
church; ah I there it is : — 

" IIUXC LAriDKM rOSUERUXT 
Seen MCERENTES." 

But this is the start, and here they are, — coats bright 
as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can 
make them. Some of the best of the colts are 
pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their 
paces. What is that old gentleman crying about? 
and the old lady by him, and the three girls, what 
are they all covering their eyes for ? Oh, that is 
their colt which has just been trotted up on the 
stage. Do they really think those little thin k'gs 
can do anything in such a slashing sweepstakes as is 
coming off in these next forty years ? Oh, this ter- 
rible gift of second-sight that comes to some of ua 



]08 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

when we begin to look through the silvered rings of 
the arcus senilis ! 

Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few 
broken down ; two or three bolted. Several show 
in advance of the ruck. Cassock^ a black colt, seems 
to be ahead of the rest ; those black colts commonly 
get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first 
quarter. Meteor has pulled up. 

Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassock 
has dropped from the front, and Judex^ an iron-gray, 
has the lead. But look I how they have thinned out! 
Down flat, — five, — six, — how many? They lie still 
enough I they will not get up again in this race, be 
very sure! And the rest of them, what a "tailing 
oft"! Anybody can see who is going to win, — 
perhaps. 

Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dives, bright 
sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins 
to make play fast; is getting to be the favourite 
with many. But who is that other one that has been 
lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows 
close up to the front ? Don't you remember the 
quiet brown colt Asteroid, \vith the star in his fore- 
head ? That is he ; he is one of the sort that lasts ; 
look out for him I The black " colt," as we used to 
call him, is in the background, taking it easily in a 
gentle trot. 'There is one they used to call the Filly, 
on account of a certain feminine air he had ; well up, 
you see ; the Filly is not to be despised, my boy ! 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TUE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 109 

Forty years. More dropping off, — but places much 
as before. 

Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the 
course are coming in at a walk ; no more running. 
Who is ahead? Ahead? What I and the winning- 
post a slab of white or gi-ay stone standing out from 
that turf where there is no more jockeying or strain- 
ing for victory I Well, the world marks their places 
in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter 
very little, if they have run as well as they knew 
how I 

Did I not say to you a little while ago that 

the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and 
analogies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or 
Wordsworth, just now, to show you what thoughts 
were suggested to them by the simplest natural 
objects, such as a flower or a leaf; but I will read 
you a few lines, if you do not object, suggested by 
looking at a section of one of those chambered shells 
to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We 
need not trouble ourselves about the distinction be- 
tween this and the Paper Nautilus, the Arg-onauta of 
the ancients. The name applied to both shoWs that 
each has long been compared to a ship, as you may 
see more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the " En- 
cyclopedia," to which he refers. If you will look 
into Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find u 
figure of one of these shells, and a section of it. Tlit 
last will show you the series of enlarging compart 



110 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ments su'^cessively dwelt in by the animal that 
inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening 
spiral. Can you find no lesson in this? 

THE CHAJSIBERED NAUTILUS. 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 

Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral r^efs lie bare, 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair 

o 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

And every chambered cell, 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Befbre thee lies revealed, — \ ,^^ •-. h ' 

Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed 1 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil ; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through. 

Built up its idle door. 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 
Child of the wandering sea, 
Cast from her lap forlorn 1 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TUE BREAKFAST-TABLE. m 

From thy dead lips a clearer note is horn 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rinfjs. 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : — 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll I 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea I 



V. 



A Lyric conception — my friend, the Poet, said- 
hits me like a bullet in the forehead. I have often 
had the blood drop from my cheeks when it struck, 
and felt that I turned as white as death. Then 
comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the 
spine, — then a gasp and a great jump of the heart, — 
then a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels 
of the head, — then a long sigh, — and the poem is 
written. 

It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write 
it so suddenly, — I replied. 

No,— said he, — far from it. I said written, but T 



112 THE AUTOCRAT OF IIIE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

did not say copied. Every such poem has a son. 
and a body, and it is the body of it, or the copy, that 
men read and publishers pay for. The soul of it is 
born in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to 
him a thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet 
words, — words that have loved each other from the 
cradle of the language, but have never been wedded 
until now. Whether it will ever fully embody itself 
in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncer- 
tain; but it exists potentially from the instant that 
the poet turns pale with it. It is enough to stun 
and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come 
crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those par- 
allel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas 
were jogging along in their regular sequences of as- 
sociation. No wonder the ancients made the poet- 
ical impulse wholly external. Wjvlv uev&E em- Goddess, 
•^Muse,— divine afflatus, — something outside always. 
7 never wrote anv verses worth readinsf. I can't. I 
am too stupid. If I ever copied any that were worth 
reading, I was only a medium. 

[I was talkiiig all this time to our boarders, you 
understand, — telling them what this poet told me. 
The comj)any listened rather attentively, I thought, 
considering the literary character of the remarks.] 

The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me 
if I ever road anything better than Pope's " Essay 
on Man " ? Had I ever perused McFingal ? He was 
fond of poetry when he was a boy, — hi" mo'';her 



rilE AUIOCKAT OF TUE BREAKFAST-TADLE. US 

taught him to say many little pieces, — he remem 

Dered one beautiful hymn; — and the old gentleman 

began, m a clear, loud voice, for his years, — 

•' The spacious firmament on high, 
With all the blue ethereal sky, 
And spangled heavens," 

He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint 
flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell 
upon his cheek. As I looked round, I was reminded 
of a show I once saw at the Museum, — the Sleeping 
Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sud- 
den breaking out in this way turned every face 
towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed 
to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Bidily, is not a 
foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a senti- 
ment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad- 
and-high-shouldered type; one of those imported 
female servants who are known in public by their 
amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and 
a headlong and as it were precipitous walk, — the 
waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at 
every heavy footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, 
not for emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped 
with something upon the table, when I saw the 
coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested, — mo- 
tionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she 
couldn't set the plate down while the old gentleman 
was speaking! 

He w^as quite silent after this, still weanrg the 



114 THE AUTOCRAT 0? THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Blisfht flush on his cheek. Don't ever think the 
poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead 
is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when 
his hand trembles ! If they ever were there, they 
are there still ! 

By and by we got talking again. Does a poet 

lo'/e the verses written through him, do you think, 
Sir ? — said the divinity-student. 

So long as they are warm from his mind, carry 
any of his animal heat about them, I know he loves 
them, — I answered. When they have had time to 
cool, he is more indiflercnt. 

A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, — said 
the young fellow whom they call John. 

The last words, only, reached the ear of the eco- 
nomically organized female in black bombazine. 

Buckwheat is skerce and high, — she remarked. 
[Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady, 
— pays nothing, — so she must stand by the guns 
and be ready to repel boarders.] 

I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I 
had some things I wanted to say, and so, after wait- 
ing a minute, I began again. — I don't think the 
poems I read you sometimes can be fairly appre- 
ciated, given to you as they are in the green state. 

You don't know what I mean by the green 

state ? Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things 
are good for nothing until they have been kept a 
long while ; and some are good for nothing untij 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 115 

they have been long kept and nsecL Of the first, 
wine is the illustrious and immortal example. Of 
those which must be kept and used I will name 
three, — meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The 
meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned 
a thousand offerings to the cloud-compelling deities. 
It comes to us without complexion or flavor, — born 
of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as 
pallida Mors herself. The fire is lighted in its cen- 
tral shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad 
leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up from 
an acre and curdled into a drachm arc diffused 
through its thirsting pores. First a discoloration, 
then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint 
spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to 
her old brown autumnal hue, you see, — as true in 
the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of 
October! And then the cumulative wealth of its 
fragrant reminiscences I he who inhales its vapors 
takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath ; and one 
cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that 
hang around it as the smell of flowers clings to the 
dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina I 

[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for / do 
not^ though I have owned a calumet since my child- 
hood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk 
species) my grandsire won, together with a tom- 
ahawk and beaded knife-sheath ; paying for the lot 
•rith a bullet-mark on his right che^k. On the ma* 



116 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

ternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted to- 
bacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box-wood 
Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth ; 
I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's 
" Triumph of Galatea." It came to me in an an- 
cient shagreen case, — how old it is I do not know, — 
but it mudt have been made since Sir Walter Ra- 
leigh's time. If you are curious, you shall see it 
any day. Neither will I pretend that I am so un- 
used to the rriore perishable smoking contrivance 
that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay 
in a ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am 
not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound 
bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incom- 
bustibles, the cigar ^ so called, of the shops, — which 
to " draw " asks the suction-power of a nursling in- 
fant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of 
an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, 
even if my illustration strike your fancy, to conse- 
crate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of 
a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie- 
breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think 
for. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow 
brown before its time under such Nicotian regimen, 
and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly 
bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will 
enslaved.] 

Violins, too, — the sweet old Amati I — the divine 
Stradivarius I Played on by ancient maestros until 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. HJ 

the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers 
stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate young en- 
thusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and 
?jy his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold 
agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed 
from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso, who let it 
slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his 
hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and 
rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, 
beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader. 
Into lonely prisons with improvident artists ; into 
convents from which arose, day and night, the holy 
hymns with which its tones were blended ; and back 
again to orgies in which it learned to howl and 
laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it ; then 
again to the gentle dilettante who calmed it down 
with easy melodies until it answered him softly as 
in the days of the old maestros. And so given into 
our hands, its pores all full of music ; stained, like 
the meerschaum, through and through, with the con- 
centrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies 
which have kindled and faded on its strings. 

Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used, 
like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as 
porous as the meerschaum ; — the more porous it is, 
the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is 
capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of .the 
essence of our own humanity, — its tenderness, its 
heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradu- 



118 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

ally stained through with a divine secondary colof 
derived from ourselves. So you see it must take 
time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony 
with our nature, by staining ourselves through every 
thought and image our being can penetrate. 

Then again as to the mere music of a new poem ; 
why, who can expect anything more from that than 
from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's 
hands ? Now you know very well that there are no 
less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These 
pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a 
century, more or less, to make them thoroughly ac- 
quainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony, 
and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as 
if it were a great seed-capsule which had grown from 
a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, 
the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, 
but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets toler- 
ably dry and comparatively resonant. 

Don't you see that all this is just as true of a 
poem ? Counting each word as a piece, there are 
more pieces in an average copy of verses than in a 
violin. The poet has forced all these words together, 
and fastened them, and they don't understand it at 
first. But let the poem be repeated aloud and mur- 
mured over in the mind's muffled whisper often 
enough, and at length the parts become knit together 
in such absolute solidarity that you could not change 
a syllable without the whole world's trying out 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAbLE. 119 

against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric. 
Observe, too, how the drying process takes place in 
the stuff of a poem just as in that of a violin. Here 
is a Tyrolese fiddle that is just coming to its hun- 
rkedth birthday, — (Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 17G0,) 
. — the sap is pretty well out of it. And here is the 
song of an old poet whom Neaera cheated : — 

" Nox Cfat, et coelo fiilgebat Luna sereno 

Inter minora siilera, 
Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum 

In verba jurabas mea.** 

Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these ola 
dead Latin phrases ? Now I tell you that every 
word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a cer- 
tain succulence; and though I cannot expect the 
sheets of the " Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I 
sometimes print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp 
papyrus that held those words of Iloratius Flaccus, 
yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, 
and while the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly 
judge of my performances, and that, if made of th<» 
true stuff, they will ring better after a while. 

[There was silence for a brief space, after my 
somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident 
analogies. Presently a person turned towards me — 
1 do not choose to designate the individual — and 
said that he rather expected my pieces had given 
pretty good '• sahtisfahction" — I had, up to tliis mo- 
ment, considered this complimentary phrase as sacred 



J 20 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

to the use of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has 
been usually accompanied by a small pecuniary tes- 
timonial, have acquired a certain relish for this 
moderately tepid and unstimulating expression of 
enthusiasm. But as a reward for gratuitous services, 
I confess I thought it a little below that blood-heat 
standard which a man's breath ought to have, 
whether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for 
a favorable opportunity, however, before making the 
remarks which follow.] 

There are single expressions, as I have told 

you already, that fix a man's position for you before 
you have done shaking hands with him. Allow me 
to expand a little. There are several things, very 
slight in themselves, yet implying other things not 
so unimportant. Thus, your French servant has 
devalise your premises and got caught. Excusez, 
says the serge nt-de-ville^ as he politely relieves him 
of his upper garments and displays his bust in the 
full daylight. Good shoulders enough, — a little 
marked, — traces of smallpox, perhaps, — but white. 
.... Crac ! from the serge nt-de -ville^ s broad palm 
on the white shoulder ! Now look ! Vosrue la srci- 
Icre I Out comes the big red V — mark of the hot 
iron; — he had blistered it out pretty nearly, — hadn't 
he? — the old rascal VOLEUR, branded in the gal- 
leys at Marseilles! [Don't! What if he has got 
something like this? — ^nobody supposes I invented 
6uch a story.] 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TUE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 121 

My man John, who used to drive two of those six 
equine females which I told you I had owned, — for, 
look you, my friends, simple though I stand here, T 
am one that has been driven in his " kerridge," — not 
using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any bat- 
tered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more 
than one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled 
vehicle with a pole ^ — my man John, I say, was a re- 
tired soldier. He retired unostentatiously, as many 
of Her Majesty's modest servants have done before 
and since. John told me, that when an officer thinks 
he recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and would 
know if he has really been in the service, that he 
may restore him, if possible, to a grateful country, 
he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply, 
" Strap I " If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap, 
he has learned the reprimand for its ill adjustrnent 
The old word of command flashes through his mus- 
cles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the place 
where the strap used to be. 

[I was all the time preparing for my grand covp^ 
you understand ; but I saw they were not quite 
ready for it, and so continued, — always in illustra- 
tion of the general principle I had laid down.] 

Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody 
thinks of. There was a legend, that, when the Dan- 
ish pirates made descents upon the English coast, 
they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape 
of Saxons, who would not let them go, — on the con- 

6 



J 22 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 

bary, insifjted on their staying, and, to make sure of 
it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or as 
Bartholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his title- 
page, and, having divested them of the one esstatial 
and perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the 
mildest climates, nailed the same on the church-door 
as we do the banns of marriage, in terrorem, 

[There was a laugh at this among some of the 
young folks ; but as I looked at our landlady, I saw 
that " the water stood in her eyes," as it did in Chris- 
tiana's when the interpreter asked her about the spi- 
der, and I fancied, but wasn't quite sure that the 
schoolmistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same 
conversation, as you remember.] 

That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story, — said the 
young fellow whom they call John. I abstained 
from making Hamlet's remark to Horatio, and con- 
tinued. 

Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing 
and beautifying an old Saxon church in a certain 
English village, and among other things thought the 
doors should be attended to.. One of them particu- 
larly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it 
were, and as if it would be all the better for scrap- 
ing. There happened to be a microscopist in the 
village who had heard the old pirate story, and he 
took it into his head to examine the crust on this 
door. There was no mistake about it ; it was a 
genuine historical document, of the Ziska drum-head 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 123 

pattern, — a real cutis humana^ stripped from some 
old Scandinavian jfilibuster, and the legend was true. 

My friend, the Professor, settled an important his- 
torical and financial question once by the aid of an 
exceedingly minute fragment of a similar document 
Behind the pane of plate-glass which bore his name 
and title burned a modest lamp, signifying to the 
passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest 
favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had 
freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise 
inebriates, following a moth-like impulse very nat- 
ural under the circumstances, dashed his fist at the 
light and quenched the meek luminary, — breaking 
through the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now 
I don't want to go into miautice at table, you know, 
but a naked hand can no more go through a pane of 
thick glass without leaving some of its cuticle, to 
say the least, behind it, than a butterfly can go 
through a sausage-machine without looking the 
worse for it. The Professor gathered up the frag- 
ments of glass, and with them certain very minute 
but entirely satisfactory documents which would 
have identified and hanged any rogue in Christen- 
dom who had parted with them. — The historical 
question. Who did it ? and the financial question, 
Who paid for it ? were both settled before the new 
'amp was lighted the next evening. 

You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, 
touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred 



124 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

honor, may be reached by means of very insignifi 
cant premises. This is eminently true of manners 
and forixis of speech ; a movement or a phrase often 
tells you all you want to know about a person. 
Thus, "How's your health?" (commonly pronounced 
hadlth) — instead of, How do you do ? or. How are 
you? Or calling your little dark entry a "hall," and 
your old rickety one-horse wagon a " kerridge." Or 
telling a person who has been trying to please you 
that he has given you pretty good " sahtisfahction." 
Or saying that you "remember of" such a thing, or 
that you have been " stoppin' " at Deacon Some- 
body's, — and other such expressions. One of my 
friends had a little marble statuette of Cupid in the 
parlor of his country-house, — bow, arrows, wings, 
and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region, 
looking pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the 
house " if that was a statoo of her deceased infant ? " 
What a delicious, though somewhat voluminous 
biography, social, educational, and aesthetic in that 
brief question ! 

[Please observe with what Machiavellian astute- 
ness I smuggled in the particular offence which it 
was my object to hold up to my fellow-boarders, 
without too personal an attack on the individual at 
whose door it lay.] 

That was an exceedingly dull person who made the 
remark. Ex pede Herculem. He might as well have 
said, " From a peck of apples you may judge of the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. lr>^ 

oarrel." Ex pede, to be sure! Read, instead, Ez 
ungne minimi digiti pedis, Herculem, ejusque patrcm^ 
matrem, avos et proavos, filios, nepotes et pronepotes ! 
Talk to me about yom dbg nov orul Tell me about 
Cuvier's getting up a megatherium from a tooth, or 
Agassiz's drawing a portrait of an undiscovered fish 
from a single scale I As the " O " revealed Giotto, 
— as the one word " moi " betrayed the Stratford- 
atte-Bowe-taught Anglais, — so all a man's antece- 
dents and possibilities are summed up in a single 
utterance which gives at once the gauge of his edu- 
cation and his mental organization. 

Possibilities, Sir ? — said the divinity-student ; can't 
a man who says Haow ? arrive at distinction ? 

Sir, — I replied, — in a republic all things are pos- 
sible. But the man with a future has almost of 
necessity sense enough to see that any odious trick 
of speech or manners must be got rid of. Doesn't 
Sydney Smith say that a public man in England 
never gets over a false quantity uttered in early life ? 
Our public men are in little danger of this fatal mis- 
step, as few of them are in the habit of introducing 
Latin into their speeches, — for good and sufficient 
easons. But they are bound to speak decent Eng- 
lish, — unless, indeed, they are rough old campaign- 
ers, like General Jackson or General Taylor; in 
which case, a few scars on Priscian's head are par- 
doned to old fellows who have quite as many on 
their own, and a constituency of thirty empires ia 



126 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

not at all particular, provided they do not sweai in 
their Presidential Messages. 

However, it is not for me to talk. I have made 
mistakes enough in conversation and print. I never 
find them out until they are stereotyped, and then I 
think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt I shall 
make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is over, 
and remember them all before another. How one 
does tremble with rage at his own intense momentary 
stupidity about things he knows perfectly well, and 
to think how he lays himself open to the imperti- 
nences of the captatores verborum, those useful but 
humble scavengers of the language, whose business 
it is to pick up what might offend or injure, and re- 
move it, hugging and feeding on it as they go! I 
don't want to speak too slightingly of these verbal 
critics ; — how can I, who am so fond of talking about 
errors and vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a 
difference between those clerical blunders wiiich al- 
most every man commits, knowing better, and that 
habitual grossness or meanness of speech which is 
unendurable to educated persons, from anybody that 
wears silk or broadcloth. 

[I write down the above remarks this morning, 
January 26th, making this record of the date that no- 
body may think it was written in wrath, on account 
of any particular grievance suffered from the inva- 
sion of any individual scarabceus grammaticus.~\ 

1 wonder if anybody ever finds fault witb 



THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 127 

anything I say at this table when it is repeated ? I 
hope they do, I am sure. I should be very certain 
that I had said nothing of much significance, if they 
did not. 

Did you never, in walking in the fields, come 
across a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody 
knows how long, just where you found it, with the 
grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it, 
close to its edges, — and have you not, in obedience 
to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying 
there long enough, insinuated your stick or your foot 
or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as 
a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, 
" It's done brown en«ugh by this time " ? What an 
odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleas- 
ant surprise to a small community, the very existence 
of which you had not suspected, until the sudden 
dismay and scattering among its members produced 
by your turning the old stone over ! Blades of grass 
flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they 
had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling 
creatures, some of them coleopterous or horny- 
shelled, — turtle-bugs one wants to call them ; some 
of them softer, but cunningly spread out and com- 
pressed like Lepine watches ; (Nature never loses a 
crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern 
bedstead, but she always has one of her flat-pattern 
Uve timekeepers to slide into it ;) black, glossy 
crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like 



128 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

the whips of four-horse stage-coaches ; motionless, 
slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more hor- 
rible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal 
wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone 
turned and the wholesome light of day let upon this 
compressed and blinded community of creeping 
things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of 
legs — and some of them have a good many — rush 
round wildly, butting each other and everything in 
their way, and end in a general stampede for under- 
ground retreats from the region poisoned by sun- 
shine. Next year you will find the grass growing 
tall and green where the stone lay ; the ground-bird 
builds her nest where the beetle had his hole ; the 
dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and 
the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over 
their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissful 
consciousness pulsate through their glorified being. 

The young fellow whom they call John saw 

fit to say, in his very familiar way, — at which I do 
not choose to take offence, but which I sometimes 
think it necessary to repress, — that I was coming it 
rather strong on the butterflies. 

No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those 
images, — the butterfly as well as the others. The 
stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature 
borne down and bleached of all its colour by it. The 
shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings 
that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREA.^F AST-TABLE. 129 

kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is 
whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying 
incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious 
face or a laughing one. The next year stands for 
the coming time. Then shall the nature which had 
lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature and 
native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's 
minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new- 
born humanity. Then shall beauty — Divinity taking 
outlines and color — light upon the souls of men as 
the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit rising 
from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor 
grub, which would never have found wings, had not 
the stone been lifted. 

You never need think you can turn over any old 
falsehood without a terrible squirming and scatter- 
ing of the horrid little population that dwells under 

it. 

Every real thought on every real subject 

knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As soon 
as his breath comes back, he very probably begins to 
expend it in hard words. These are the best evidence 
a man can have that he has said something it was 
time to say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the 
effect of one of his pamphlets. " I think I have not 
been attacked enough for it," he said ;— " attack is 
the reaction ; I never think I have hit hard unless it 

rebounds." 

If a fellow attacked my opinions in orint 

6 * 



130 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

would I reply ? Not I. Do you think I don't un- 
derstand what my friend, the Professor, long ago 
called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy ? 

Don't know what that means ? — Well, I will tell 
you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one 
arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and 
the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would 
stand at the same height in one as in the other 
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the 
same way, — and the fools know it. 

No, but I often read what they say about 

other people. There are about a dozen phrases 
which all come tumbling along together, like the 
tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush, 
and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches 
that everybody knows. If you get one, you get the 
whole lot. 

What are they? — Oh, that depends a good deal on 
latitude and longitude. Epithets follow the isother- 
mal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them in two 
families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, 
brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, cele- 
brated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and 
first writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked, 
pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black- 
hearted outcast, and disgrace to civilization. 

What do I think determines the set of phrases a 
man gets ? — Well, I should say a set of influences 
something like these : — 1st. Relationships, political, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 131 

religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oysters , in the form 
of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criti 
cism. I believe in the school, the college, and the 
clergy; but my sovereign logic, for regulating public 
opinion — which means commonly the opinion of half 
a dozen of the critical gentry — is the following 
Major proposition. Oysters au naturcl. Minor propo* 
sitiun. The same " scalloped." Conclusion. That 

(here insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, 

wise, brilliant, — and the rest. 

No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has 

oysters, and another epithets. It is an exchange of 
hospitalities ; one gives a " spread " on linen, and the 
other on paper,— that is all. Don't you think you 
and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the 
critical line? I am sure I couldn't resist the soften- 
ing influences of hospitality. I don't like to dine 
out, you know, — I dine so well at our own lable, [our 
landlady looked radiant,] and the company is so 
pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among 
the boarders] ; but if I did partake of a man's salt, 
with such additions as that article of food requires 
to make it palatable, I could never abuse him, and 
if I had to speak of him, I suppose I should hang 
my set of jingling epithets round him like a string 
of sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make 
liars of most of us, — not absolute liars, but such 
careless handlers of truth that its sharp corners get 
terribly rounded. I love truth as chiefest among the 



132 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE 

virtues ; I trust it runs in my blood ; but I would 
never be a critic, because I know I could not always 
tell it. I might write a criticism of a book that 
happened to please me ; that is another matter. 

Listen, Benjamin Franklin ! This is for you, 

and such others of tender age as you may tell it to. 

When we are as yet small children, long before the 
time when those two gi'own ladies offer us the choice 
of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, 
holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his 
left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless 
ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold — 
Truth. The spheres are veined and streaked and 
spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, 
where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect 
you can make out upon every one of them the three 
letters L, I, E. The child to whom they arc offered 
very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the 
most convenient things in the world ; they roll with 
the least possible impulse just where the child would 
have them. The cubes will not roll at all ; they have 
a great talent for standing still, and always keep right 
side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds 
that things, which roll so easily are very apt to roll 
into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way 
when he most wants them, while he always knows 
where to find the others, which stay where they are 
left. Thus he learns — thus we learn — to drop the 
streaked and speckled globes of falsehrK)d and to 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 133 

hold fast the wliite angular blocks of truth. But 
then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and 
last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth 
must roll^ or nobody can do anything with it ; and so 
the first with her coarse rasp, and the second with 
her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do 
so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white 
cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy 
by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling 
spheres of falsehood. 

The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that 
she was pleased with this, and that she would read 
it to her little flock the next day. But she should 
tell the children, she said, that there were better rea- 
sons for truth than could be found in mere experi- 
ence of its convenience and the inconvenience of 
lying. 

Yes, — I said, — buteducation always begins through 
the senses, and works up to the idea of absolute right 
and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn 
about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable, — 
afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity 
of the universe. 

Do I think that the particular form of lying 

often seen in newspapers, under the title, " From ir 
Foreign Correspondent," does any harm ? — Why, 
no, — I don't know that it does. I suppose it doesn't 
really deceive people any more than the "Arabian 
Nights " or '' Gulliver's Travels " do. Sometimes the 



X34 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up 
facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny 
papers, so as to mislead those w ho are desirous of 
information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers, 
the other day, which contains a number of improba- 
bilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send 
up and get it for you, if you would like to hear 
it. Ah, this is it ; it is headed 

^ *' Our Sumatra Correspondence. 

" This island is now the property of the Stamford 
family, — having been won, it is said, in a raflle, by 

Sir Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania 

of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this gen- 
tleman may be found in an interesting series of 
questions (unfortunately not yet answered) contained 
in the ' Notes and Queries.' This island is entirely 
surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a large 
amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes 
remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently dis- 
plays on its surface, during calm weather, the rain- 
bow tints of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The 
summers are oppressively hot, and the winters very 
probably cold ; but this fact cannot be ascertained 
precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury 
in these latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern 
regions, and thus the thermometer is rendered useless 
in winter. 

" The principal vegetable productions of the island 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 135 

are the pepper tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper 
being very abundantly produced, a benevolent society 
was organized in London during the last century for 
supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as an 
addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received 
from Dr. D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oys- 
ters were of the kind called natives in England, the 
natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct, 
refused to touch them, and confined themselves en- 
tirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were 
brought over. This information was received from 
one of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and 
exceedingly fond of missionaries. He is said also to 
be very skilful in the cuisine peculiar to the island. 

"During the season of gathering the pepper, the 
persons employed are subject to various incommodi- 
ties, the chief of which is violent and long-continued 
sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the vehemence 
of these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of 
them are often driven backwards for great distances 
at immense speed, on the well-known principle of 
the aeolipile. Not being able to see where they are 
going, these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces 
against the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs 
and thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As, 
during the whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively 
on this stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable. 
The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable 
rage. A young man suffering from the pepper-fever 



136 I'HE AUTOCRAT OF THK BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

as it is called, cudgeiled another most severely foi 
appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling 
value, and was only pacified by having a present 
made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine 
called the Peccavi by the Catholic Jews, who, it is 
well known, abstain from swine's flesh in imitation 
of the Mahometan Buddhists. 

" The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches 
are well known to Europe and America under the 
familiar name of maccaroni. The smaller twigs are 
called vermicelli. They have a decided animal flavor, 
as may be observed in the soups containing them. 
Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a 
very dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly 
ferocious by being boiled. The government of the 
island, therefore, never allows a stick of it to be ex- 
ported without being accompanied by a piston with 
which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly 
swept out. These are commonly lost or stolen 
before the mac^caroni arrives among us. It therefore 
always contains many of these insects, which, 
however, generally die of old age in the shops, so 
that accidents from this source are comparatively 
rare. 

" The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally 
of hot rolls. The buttered-muffin variety is supposed 
to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream 
found on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the 
hybrid in the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit ia 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 137 

splitting, so as to fit it for the Hea-table, where it is 
commonly served up with cold " 



There, — I don't want to read any more of it. 

You see that many of these statements are highly 
improbable. — No, I shall not mention the paper. — No, 
neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of the 
style of these popular writers. I think the fellow 
who wrote it must have been reading some of their 
stories, and got them mixed up with his history and 
geography. 1 don't suppose he lies ; — he sells it to 
the editor, who knows how many squares off " Suma- 
tra "is. The editor, who sells it to the public 

By the way, the papers have been very civil — 
haven't they? — to the — the — what d'ye call it? — 
"Northern Magazine," — isn't it? — got up by some 
of those Come-outers, down East, as an organ for 
their local peculiarities. 

— The Professor has been fo see me. Came in, 
glorious, at about twelve o'clock, last night. Said 
he had been with " the boys." On inquiry, found 
that " the boys " were certain baldish and grayish old 
gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various im- 
portant stations of society. The Professor is one of 
the same set, but he always talks as if he had been 

out of college about ten years, whereas 

. . . [Each of these dots was a little nod, which the 
company understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] 
He calls them sometimes " the boys," and sometimes 
*the old fellows." Call him by the latter title, and 



138 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Bee how he likes it* — Well, he came in last night 
glorious, as I was saying. Of course 1 don't mean 
vinously exalted ; he drinks little wine on such occa- 
sions, and is well known to all the Peters and Pat- 
ricks as the gentleman who always has indefinite 
quantities of black tea to kill any extra gla^-s of red 
claret he may have swallowed. But the Proff:sso^ 
says he always gets tipsy on old memories at these 
' gatherings. He was, I forget how many years old 
when he went to the meeting; just turned of twenty 
now, — he said. He made various youthful proposals 
to me, including a duet under the landlady's daugh- 
ter's window. He had just learned a trick, he said, 
of one of " the boys," of getting a splendid bass out 
of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of his 
hand. Ollered to sing " The sky is bright," accom- 
panying himself on the front-door, if I would go 
down and help in tlfe chorus. Said there never was 
such a set of fellows as the old boys of the set he 
has been with. Judges, mayors. Congress-men, Mr. 
Speakers, leaders in science, clergymen better thaR 
famous, and famous too, poets by the half-dozen, 
singers with voices like angels, financiers, wits, three 
of ihe best laughers in the Commonwealth, engi- 
neers, agriculturists, — all forms of talent and knowl- 
edge he pretended were represented in that meeting. 
Then he began to quote Byron about Santa Croce, 
and maintained that he could "furnish out creation" 
in all its details from that set of his. He would like 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TlIF RKKAKrAST-TABLE. UI 

Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, 

Each shadow rends its tlowory chain, 
Sprinrjs in a bubble from its brim 

And walks the chambers of the brain. 

Poor Beauty ! time and fortune's wrong 

No form nor feature may withstand, — 
Thy wrecks are scattered all along, 

Like emptied sea-sltells on the sand ; — 
Yet, sprinkled with this blushing,' rain, 

The dust restores each blooming girl. 
As if the sea-shells moved again 

Their glistening lips of pmk and pearl. 

Here lies the home of school-boy life. 

With cri-akiiig stair and wind-swrpt hall, 
And, scarred by many a truant knife, 

Our old initials on the wall ; 
Here rest — their keen vibrations mute — 

The shout of voices known so well. 
The rin«;ing laugh, the wailing llutc, 

The chiding of the shari)-toiigued bell. 

Here, clad in burning robes, are laid 
Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed ; 

And here those i.'herishcd forms have strayed 
AVe miss awhile, and call thorn dead. 

What wizard fills the maddening glass ? 

• What soil the enchanted clusters grew. 

That buried passions wake and pass 
In beaded drops of fiery dew ? 

Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine, — 
Our hearts c'\n boast a warmer giow, 



142 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Filled from a vintage more divine, — 

Calmed, but not chilled by winter's snow 1 

To-niiiht the palest wave we sip 

Ilich as the priceless drau^dit shall be 

That wet tiie bride of Caiia's lip, — 
The wedding wine of Galilee 1 



VL 

( Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which 
its them all.j 

T think, Sir, — said the divinity-stud(^nt, — you 

must intend that for one of the sayings of the Seven 
Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the other 
day. 

I thank you, my young friend, — was my reply, — 
but I must say something better than that, before I 
could pretend to fill out the number. 

The schoolmistress wanted to know how 

many of these sayings there were on record, and 
what, and by whom said. 

Why, let us see,— there is that one of Ben- 
jamin Franklin, " the great Bostonian," after whom 
tills lad was named. To be sure, he said a great 
many wise things, — and I don't feel sure he didn*t 
borrow this, — he speaks as'if it were old. But then 
he applied it so neatly I — 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE RREAKFAST-TARLi: . 113 

" lie that has once done you ii kiiulness will be 
more ready to do you another than he whom you 
yourself have obliged." 

Then there is that glorious Epieuican parailox, 
uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his 
flashing moments : — 

" Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense 
with its necessaries." 

To these must certainly be added that other say- 
ing of one of the wittiest of men : — 

" Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." 

The divinity-student looked grave at this, but 

Raid nothing. 

The sclioolmistress spoke out, and said she didn't 
think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only 
another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place 
after New York or Boston. 

A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with 
the young fellow they call John, — evidently a stran- 
ger, — said there w'as one more wise man's saying 
that he li 1(1 JKiird ; it w^as about our place, but he 
didn't know who said it. — A civil curiosity w^as 
manifested by the company to li<ar the ft)urth wise 
Bajing. I heard him distinctly w^hispering to the 
young fellow who brought him to dinner, Shall I 
tell it? To which the answer was. Go ahead! — 
Well, — he said, — this was what I heard : — 

" Boston State-House is the hub of the solar sys- 
vem. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man 



144 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

if you had the tire of all creation straightened out 
for a crowbar." 

Sir, — said I, — I am gi-atified with your remark. It 
expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have 
sometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness. 
The satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston, 
— and of all other considerable — and inconsiderable 
— places with which I have had the privilege of 
being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the 
only place in the world. Frenchmen — you remem- 
ber the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc. — 
I recollect well, by the way, a sign in that city which 
ran thus: "Hotel de I'Univers et des Etats Unis"; 
and as Paris is the universe to a Frenchman, of 
course the United States are outside of it. — " See 
Naples and then die." — It is quite as bad with 
smaller places. I have been about, lecturing, you 
know, and have found the following propositions to 
hold true of all of them. 

1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through 
the centre of each and every town or city. 

2. If more than fifty years have passed since its 
foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabi- 
tants the ^^ good old town of" (whatever its name 

may happen to be.) 

3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes 
together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared 
to be a " remarkably intelligent audience." 

4. The climate of the place is particularly favor- 
able to longevity. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 145 

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little 
known to the world. (One or two of them, you 
may perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces 
to the " Pactolian " some time since, which were 
" respectfully declined.") 

Boston is just like other places of its size; — only 
perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid 
fire-department, superior monthly publications, and 
correct habit of spelling the English language, it has 
some right to look down on the mob of cities. TU 
tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the 
real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed 
of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it 
would only send away its first-rate men, instead of 
of its second-rate ones, (no offence to the well-known 
exceptions, of which we are always proud,) we 
should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that 
which the gentleman has quoted. There can never 
be a real metropolis in this country, until the biggest 
centre can drain the lesser ones of their talent and 
wealth. — I have observed, by the way, that the people 
who really live in two great cities are by no means 
so jealous of each other, as are those of smaller 
cities situated within the intellectual basin, or suc- 
tion-rajig-e, of one large one, of the pretensions of 
any other. Don't you see why? Because their 
promising young author and rising lawyer and large 
capitalist have been drained off to the neighboring 
big city, — their prettiest girl has been exported to 

7 



146 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE. 

the same market ; all their ambition points ther«, 
and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there. 
-I hate little toad-eating cities. 

> Would I be so good as to specify any par- 
ticular example ? — Oh, — an example? Did you ever 
see a bear-trap? Never? Well, shouldn't you like 
to see me put my foot into one ? With sentiments 
of the highest consideration I must beg leave to be 
excused. 

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. 
If they have an old church or two, a few stately 
mansions of former grandees, here and there an old 
dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the 
convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the 
front-door with their tomahawks,) — if they have, scat- 
tered about, those mighty square houses built some- 
thing more than half a century ago, and standing 
like architectural boulders dropped by the former 
diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left 
them as its monument, — if they have gardens with 
elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over 
the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the 
side-walk, — if they have a little grass in the side- 
streets, enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming 
decay, — I think I could go to pieces, after my life's 
work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as 
sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be 
rocked to sleep in. I visit such spots always with 
infinite delight. My friend, the Poet, says, that 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 147 

rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the 
imasrinative and reflective faculties. Let a man live 
in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the 
wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by 
the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it 
up, you may see the sun through it by day and the 
stars by night. 

Do I think that the little villages have the 

conceit of the great towns ? — I don't believe there is 
much diilerence. You know how they read Pope's 
line in the smallest town in our State of Massa- 
chusetts? — Well, they read it 

"All are but parts of one stupendous Hull !" 

Every person's feelings have a front-door and 

a side-door by which they may be entered. The 
front-door is on the street. Some keep it always 
open ; some keep it latched ; some, locked ; some, 
bolted, — with a chain that will let you peep in, but 
not get in ; and some nail it up, so that nothing can 
pass its threshold. This front-door lead?^ into fi pas- 
sage which opens into an ante-room, and this into 
the interior apartments. The side-door opens at 
once into the sacred chambers. 

There is almost always at least one key to this 
side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a 
mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and 
friends, often, but by no means so universally, have 
duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right 
to on3; alas, if none is given with it! 



148 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

If nature or accident has put one of these keys 
into the hands of a person who has the torturing in- 
stinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words that 
Justice utters over its doomed victim, — The Lord 
have mercy on your soul I You will probably go 
mad within a reasonable time, — or, if you are a man, 
run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in 
Melbourne or San Francisco, — or, if you are a 
woman, quarrel and break your heart, or turn into 
a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it 
were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other. 

Be very careful to whom you trust one of these 
keys of the side-door. The fact of possessing one 
renders those even who are dear to you very terrible 
at times. You can keep the world out from your 
front-door, or receive visitors only when you are 
ready for them ; but those of your own flesh and 
blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in 
at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any 
mood# Some of them have a scale of your whole 
nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your 
sensibilities in semitones, — touching the naked nerve- 
pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instru- 
ment. I am satisfied that there are as great masters 
of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in 
their lines of performance. Married life is the school 
in which the most accomplished artists in this de- 
Dartment are found. A delicate woman is the best 
instrument ; she has such a magnificent compass of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 14^ 

sensibilities! From the deep inward moan which 
follows pressure on the great nerves of- right, to the 
sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a 
crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument 
possesses. A few exercises on it daily at home fit a 
man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh 
him immensely as he returns from them. No stranger 
can get a great many notes of torture out of a human 
soul ; it takes one that knows it well, — parent, child, 
brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to whom 
you give a side-door key ; too many have them al- 
ready. 

You remember the old story of the tender- 
hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, 
and was stung by it when it became thawed? If we 
take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better 
that it should sting us and we should die than that 
its chill should slowly steal into our hearts ; warm it 
we never can! I have seen faces of women that 
were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the 
icicles were forming round these women's hearts. I 
knew what freezing image lay on the white breasts 
beneath the laces! 

A very simple intellectual mechanism answers the 
necessities of friendship, and even of the most inti- 
mate relations of life. If a watch tells us the hour 
and the minute, we can be content to carry it about 
with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand 
and is not a repeater, nor a musical watch, — though 



150 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

it is not enamelled nor jewelled, — in short, though ii 
has little beyond the wheels required for a trust- 
worthy instrument, added to a good face and a pair 
of useful hands. The more wheels there are in a 
watch or a brain, the more trouble they are to take 
care of. The movements of exaltation which belong 
to genius are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, 
clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises 
which are so often met with in creative or intensely 
perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or friend- 
ship. — Observe, I am talking about minds. I won't 
say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving ; 
for that would do wrong to the understanding and 
reason ; — but, on the other hand, that the brain often 
runs away with the heart's best blood, which gives 
the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment 
or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy, 
I have no question. 

If one's intimate in love or friendship cannot or 
does not share all one's intellectual tastes or pursuits, 
that is a small matter. Intellectual companions can 
be found easily in men and books. After all, if we 
think of it, most of the world's loves and friendship's 
have been between people that could not read nor 
spell. 

But to radiate the heat of the affections into a do/, 
which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never 
warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure 
of hand or lip, — this is the great martyrdom of sen- 



THE AUTOCRAT (TF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15| 

«itive beings, — most of all in that perpetual auto da 
fe where young womanhood is the sacrifice. 

You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about 

the loves and friendships of illiterate persons, — that 
is, of the human race, with a few exceptions here 
and there. I like books, — I was born and bred 
among them, and have the easy feeling, Avhcn I get 
into their presence, that a stable-boy has among 
horses. I don't think I undervalue them either as 
companions or as instructors. But I can't help re- 
membering that the world's great men have not 
commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars 
great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libra- 
ries, I think, if any ; yet they represent to our imag- 
inations a very complete idea of manhood, and, I 
think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us 
men of letters next Saturday, we should feel honored 
by his company. 

What I wanted to say about books is this : that 
there are times in which every active mind feels 
itself above any and all human books. 

1 think a man must have a good opinion of 

himself, Sir, — said the divinity-student, — who should 
feel himself above Shakspeare at any time. 

My young friend, — I replied, — the man who is 
never conscious of a state of feeling or of intellectual 
effort entirely beyond expression by any form of words 
whatsoever is*a mere creature of language. I can 
hardly believe there are any such men. Why, think 



J 52 THE AUTOORAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 

for a moment of the power of music. The nerves 
that make us alive to it spread out (so the Professoi 
tells me) in the most sensitive region of the marrow 
just where it is widening to run upwards into the 
hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of sense 
rather than of thought. Yet it produces a continu- 
ous and, as it were, logical sequence of emotional 
and intellectual changes ; but how different from 
trains of thought proper ! how entirely beyond the 
reach of symbols ! — Think of human passions as 
compared with all phrases I Did you ever hear of a 
man's growing lean by the reading of " Romeo and 
Juliet," or blowing his brains out because Desdemona 
was maligned? There are a good many symbols, 
even, that are more expressive than words. I re- 
member a young wife who had to part with her hus- 
band for a time. She did not write a mournful 
poem ; indeed, she wa^ a silent person, and perhaps 
hardly said a word about it ; but she quietly turned 
of a deep orange color with jaundice. A great many 
people in this world have but one form of rhetoric 
for their profoundest experiences, — namely, to wasits 
away and die. When a man can read^ his paroxysm 
of feehng is passing. When he can read^ his thought 
has slackened its hold. — You talk about reading 
Shakspeare, using him as an expression for the 
highest intellect, and you wonder that any common 
person should be so presumptuous as to suppose his 
thought can rise above the text which lies before 



'IHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRKAKFAST-TABLE. J 53 

him. But think a moment. A child's reading of 
SLakspeare is one thing, and Coleridge's or Sehle- 
gcl's reading of him is another. The saturation- 
point of each mind differs from that of every other. 
But I think it is as true for the small mind which 
can only take up a little as for the great one which 
takes up much, that the suggested trains of thought 
and feeling ought always to rise above — not the 
author, but the reader's mental version of the author, 
whoever he may be. 

I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes 
find themselves thrown into exalted mental condi- 
tions like those produced by music. TIkmi they may 
drop the book, to pass at once into tlie region of 
thought without words. We may happen to be 
very dull folks, you and I, and probably are, unless 
there is some particular reason to suppose the con- 
trary. But we get glimpses now and then of a 
sphere of spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we 
are now, may sail in vast circles round the largest 
compass of earthly intelligences. 

1 confess there are times when I feel like the 

friend I mentioned to you some time ago, — 1 hate 
the very sight of a book. Sometimes it becomes 
almost a physical necessity to talk out what is in 
the mind, before putting anything else into it. It ia 
very bad to have thoughts and feelings, which were 
meant to come out in talk, strike in, as they say of 
Bome complaints that ought to show outwardly. 

7* 



154 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I always believed in life rather than in books. I 
suppose every day of earth, with its hundred thou- 
sand deaths and something more of births, — with ita 
loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its pangs 
and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the 
books that were ever written, put together. I believe 
the flowers growing at this moment send up more 
fragrance to heaven than was ever exhaled from all 
the essences ever distilled. 

Don't I read up various matters to talk about 

at this table or elsewhere ? — No, that is the last thing 
I would do. I will tell you my rule. Talk about 
those subjects you have had long in your mind, and 
listen to what others say about subjects you have 
studied but recently. Knowledge and timber 
shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned. 

Physiologists and metaphysicians have had 

their attention turned a good deal of late to the 
automatic and involuntary actions of the mind. Put 
an idea into your intelligence and leave it there an 
hour, a day, a year, without ever having occasion to 
refer to it. When, at last, you return to it, you do 
not find it as it was when acquired. It has domi- 
ciliated itself, so to speak, — become at home, — 
entered into relations with your other thoughts, and 
integrated itself with the whole fabric of the mind. 
— Or take a simple and familiar example ; Dr. Car- 
penter has adduced it. You forget a name, in con- 
versation, — go on talking, without making any effort 




OUR BENJ. FRANKLIN. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 155 

to recall it, — and presently the mind evolves it by 
its own involuntary and unconscious action, while 
you were pursuing another train of thought, and the 
name rises of itself to your lips. 

There are- some curious observations I should like 
to make about the mental machinery, but I think we 
are getting rather didactic. 

1 should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin 

would let me know something of his progress in the 
French language. I rather liked that exercise he 
read us the other day, though I must confess I should 
hardly dare to translate it, for fear some people in a 
remote city where I once lived might think I was 
drawing their portraits. 

Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I 

don't know whether the piece I mentioned from the 
French author was intended simply as Natural His- 
tory, or whether there was not a little malice in 
his description. At any rate, when I gave my trans- 
lation to B. F. to turn back again into" French, one 
reason was that I thought it would sound a little 
bald in English, and some people might think it was 
meant to have some local bearing or other, — which 
the author, of course, didn't mean, inasmuch as he 
could not be acquainted with anything on this side 
of the water. 

[The alDove remarks were addressed to the school- 
mistress, to whom I handed the paper after looking 
it over. The divinity-student came and read over 



156 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

her shoulder, — very curious, apparently, but bis eyes 
wandered, I thought. Fancying that her breathing 
was somewhat hurried and high, or thoracic^ as my 
friend, the Professor, calls it, I watched her a little 
more closely. — It is none of my business. — After all, 
it is the imponderables that move the world, — heat, 
electricity, love. — Habet .^] 

This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made 
into boarding-school French, such as you see here ; 
don't expect too much ; — the mistakes give a relish 
to it, I think. 

LES SOCIETES POLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES. • 

Ce8 Soci^tes Ik sont une Institution pour suppleer aux besoms 
d'esprit et de cceur de ces individus qui ont sun'6cu k leurs emo- 
tions k regard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distraction dA> 
Thabitude de boire. 

Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Societes, on doit avoir le 
moins de cheveux possible. S'il y en reste plusieurs qui resistent 
aux depilatoires naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques con- 
naissances, n'importe dans quel genre. D^s le moment qu'on 
cuvre la porte de la Society, on a un grand int^ret dans toutes 
les choses dont on ne salt rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste demontre 
un nouveau flexor du tarse dlun melolontlia vulgaris. Douze sa- 
Tans improvises, portans des besides, et qui ne connaissent rien des 
insectes, si ce n'est les morsures du culex, se precipitent sur I'instru- 
ment, et voient — une grandc bulle d'air, dont ils s'emerveillent avec 
effusion. Ce qui est un spectacle plein d'instruction — pour ceux 
qui ne sont pas de ladlte Societe. Tons les membres regardent les 
chimistes en particulier avec un air d'intelligence parfaite pendant 
qu'ils prouvent dans un discours d'une demiheuro que O' N^ H- C® 
etc. font quelque chose qui n'est bonne k rien, mais qui probable 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 157 

toeiit a une odeur ti^s d^sagreable, selon I'habitude des prodnlta' 
chimiques. Apres celk vient un mathematicien qui vous bourre 
avec des a+bet vous rapporte enfin un a:-f^, dont vous n'avez pas 
besoin et qui ne change nullement vos relations avec la vie. Un 
naturaliste vous parle des formations sp^ciales des animaux exces- 
sivement iuconnus, dont vous n'avez jamais soup9onue I'existence. 
Ainsi il vous d6crit hs/ollicules de ^appendix vermiformis dun dzig^ 
guetai. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un follicule. Vous ne 
savez pas ce que c'est qu'un appendix uermiformis. Vous n'avez 
jamais entendu parler du dzigguetai. Ainsi vous gagnez toutes cea 
connaissantes h. la fois, qui sattachent h. vot=e esprit comme I'eau 
adhere aux plumes d'un canard. On connait toutes les langues 
ex officio en devenant membre d'une de ces Societes. Ainsi 
quand on entend lire un Essai sur les dialectes Tchutcbiens, on 
comprend tout cela de suite, et s'instruit enormement. 

II J a deux especes d'individus qu'on trouve toujours ^ ces 
Societes : 1° Le membre k questions ; 2" Le membre a " Bylaws." 
^ La question est une speciality. Celui qui en fait metier ne fait 
jamais des reponses. La question est une manicre tres commode 
de dire les choses suivantes: -Me voilk! Je ne suis pas fossil, 
moi ,— je respire encore ! J'ai des id6es,— voyez mon intelligence I 
Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de 
celk ! Ah, nous avons un peu de sagacite, voyez vous ! Nous ne 
sommes nullement la bete qu'on ^^ns^V'—Lefaiseur de questions 
donnepeu d'attention aux reponses qu'on fait; ce n* est pas la dans 
sa spicialite. 

Le membre h " Bylaws " est le bouchon de toutes les Amotions 
mousseuses et genereuses qui se montrent dans la Socie'te. C'est 
un empereur mancjue,— un tyran h la troisi^me trituration. C'est 
un esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans 
les grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne I'alme pas 
dans la Societe, mais on le respecte et on le craint. II n'y a qu'ua 
mot pour ce membre audessus de " Bylaws." Ce mot est pour 
lui ce que I'Om est aux Hindous. C'est sa religion ; H n'y a rien 
audelk. Ce mot 1^ c'est la Coxstitution ! 



158 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Lesdites Soci^tes piibllent des feuIUetons de terns en terns. On 
les trouve abandoiines h sa porte, nus comme des enfans nouveau- 
nes, fante de membrane cutanee, ou meme papyracee. Si on 
aime la botanitjue, on y trouve une memoire sur les coquilles ; si 
on fait des etudes zoologlques, on trouve un grand tas de qV — 1» 
ce qui doit etre infinimeut plus commode que les encyclopedies. 
Ainsi il est clair comme la mdtaphysique qu'on doit devenir mem- 
bre d'une Society telle que nous decrivons. 

Recette pour le DepUatoire Physiophiloaophique 

Chaux vive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj. 

Depilez avec. Polissez eusuite. 

1 told the boy that his translation into French 



was creditable to him ; and some of the company 
wishing to hear what there was in the piece that 
made me smile, I turned it into English for them, as 
well as I could, on the spot. 

The landlady's daughter seemed to be much 
amused by the idea that a depilatory could take the 
place of literary and scientific accomplishments ; she 
wanted me to print the piece, so that she might send 
a copy of it to her cousin in Mizzourah ; she didn't 
think he'd have to do anything to the outside of his 
liead to get into any of the societies ; he had to wear 
a wig once, when he played a part in a tabuUo. 

No, — said I, — I shouldn't think of printing that in 
Engli.sh. I'll tell you why. As soon as you get a 
few thousand people together in a town, there is 
somebody that every sharp thing you say is sure to 
hit. What if a thing was written in Paris or in 
Pekin ? — that makes no difference. Everybody in 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 159 

those cities, or almost everybody, has his counterpart 
here, and in all large places. — You never studied 
averages as I have had occasion to. 

I'll tell you how I came to know so much about 
averages. There was one season when I was lectur- 
ing, commonly, five evenings in the week, through 
most of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most 
speakers do, that it was pleasanter to work one lec- 
ture than to keep several in hand. 

Don't you get sick to death of one lecture ? — 

said the landlady's daughter, — who had a new dress 
on that day, and was in spirits for conversation. 

I was going to talk about averages, — I said, — but 
I have no objection to telling you about lectures, to 
begin with. 

A new lecture always has a. certain excitement 
connected with its delivery. One thinks well of it, 
as of most things fresh from his mind. After a few 
deliveries of it, one gets tired and then disgusted 
with its repetition. Go on delivering it, and the dis- 
gust passes off, until, after one has repeated it a 
hundred or a hundred and fifty times, he rather 
enjoys the hundred and first or hundred and fifty- 
first time, before a new audience. But this is on 
one condition, — that he never lays the lecture down 
and lets it cool. If he does, there comes on a loath- 
ing for it which is mtense, so that the sight of the 
old battered manuscript is as bad as sea-sickness. 

A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We 



1(30 THE AUTOCRAT OF TUE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blisters oui 
hands, and we hate to touch it. By-and-by our 
hands get callous, and then we have no longer any 
sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the 
calluses disappear ; and if we meddle with it again, 
we miss the novelty and get the blisters. — The story 
is often quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon 
was good for nothing until it had been preached 
forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until 
it has passed its hundredth delivery; and some, I 
think, have doubled, if not quadrupled, that number. 
These old lectures are a man's best, commonly ; 
they improve by age, also, — like the pipes, fiddles, 
and poems I told you of the other day. One learns 
to make the most of their strong points and to carry 
off their weak ones, — to take out the really good 
things which don't tell on the audience, and put in 
cheaper things that do. All this degrades him, of 
course, but it improves the lecture for general deliv- 
ery. A thoroughly popular lecture ought to have 
nothing in it which five hundred people cannot aU 
take in a flash, just as it is uttered. 

:No, indeed, — I should be very sorry to say 

anything disrespectful of audiences. I have been 
Mndly treated by a great many, and may occasion- 
ally face one hereafter. But I tell you the aver^ 
age intellect of five hundred persons, taken as 
they come, is not very high. It, may be sound and 
safe, so far as it goes, but it is not very rapid or 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAl i lACLE. 161 

profound. A lecturo ought to be something which 
all can understand, about something which interests 
everybody. I think, that, if any experienced lecturet 
gives you a different account from this, it will prob- 
ably be one of those eloquent or forcible speakers 
who hold an audience by the charm of their manner, 
whatever they talk about,— even when they don't 
talk very well. 

But an averag-e^ which was what I meant to speak 
about, is one of the most extraordinary subjects of 
observation and study. It is awful in its uniformity, 
in its automatic necessity of action. Two commu- 
nities of ants or bees are exactly alike in all their 
actions, so far as w^e can see. Two lyceum assem- 
blies, of five hundred each, are so nearly alike, that 
they are absolutely undistinguishable in many cases 
by any definite mark, and there is nothing but the 
place and time by which one can tell the "remarka- 
bly intelligent audience " of a town in New York or 
Ohio from one in any New England town of similar 
="ize. Of course, if any principle of selection has 
come in, as in those special associations of young 
men which are common in cities, it deranges the uni- 
formity of the assemblage. But let there be no such 
interfering circumstances, and one knows pretty well 
even the look the audience will have, before he goes 
in. Front seats : a few old folks, — shiny-headed, — 
slant up best ear towards the speaker, — drop off 
asleep after a while, when the air be^^ins to get a 



162 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

little narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women's 
face??, young and middle-aged, a little behind these, 
but toward the front — (pick out the best, and lecture 
mainly to that.) Here and there a countenance, 
sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female 
ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number of pairs 
of young people, — happy, but not always very at- 
tentive. Boys, in the background, more or less 
quiet. Dull faces here, there, — in how many places '. 
I don't say dull people^ but faces without a ray of 
sympathy or a movement of expression. They are 
what kill the lecturer. These negative faces with 
their vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and 
suck the warm soul out of him ; — that is the chief 
reason wh}' lecturers grow so pale before the season 
is over. They render latent any amount of vital 
caloric ; they act on our minds as those cold-blooded 
creatures I was talking about act on our hearts. 

Out of all these inevitable elements the audience 
is generated, — a great compound vertebrate, as much 
like fifty others you have seen as any two mammals 
of the same species are like each other. Each audi- 
ence laughs, and each cries, in just the same places 
of your lecture ; that is, if you make one laugh or 
cry, you make all. Even those little indescribable 
movements which a lecturer takes cognizance of, 
iust as a driver notices his horse's cocking his ears, 
are sure to come in exactly tbe same place of your 
*ecture always. I declare to you, that, as the monk 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAB' E. 165 

said about the picture in the conventj — thai he some- 
times thought the living tenants were the shadows, 
and the painted figures the realities, — I have some- 
times felt as if I were a wandering spirit, and this 
great unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night 
after night was one ever-listening animal, which 
writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled ai 
my feet every evening, turning up to me the same 
eleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my 
last drowsy incantation ! 

Oh, yes I A thousand kindly and courteous 

acts, — a thousand faces that melted individually out 
of my recollection as the April snow melts, but only 
to steal away and find the beds of flowers whose 
roots are memory, but which blossom in poetry and 
dreams. I am not ungrateful, nor unconscious of all 
the good feeling and intelligence everywhere to be 
met with through the vast parish to which the lec- 
turer ministers. But when I set forth, leadinjj a 
string of my mind's daughters to market, as the 

country-folk fetch in their strings of horses Pardon 

me, that was a coarse fellow who sneered at the sym- 
pathy wasted on an unhappy leoturer, as if, because 
he was decently paid for his services, he had there- 
fore sold his sensibilities. — Family men get dreadfully 
homesick. In the remote and bleak village the heart 
returns to the red blaze of the logs in one's fireplace 
at home. 

" There are his young barbarians all at play," — 



164 THE AUTOCKAr OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLF 

if he owns any youthful savages. — No, ihe world has 
a million roosts for a man, but only one nest. 

It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which an 



appeal is always made in all discussions. The men 
of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that 
slight tension about the nostrils which the conscious- 
ness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact 
or a revolver gives the individual thus armed. When 
a person is really full of information, and does not 
abuse it to crush conversation, his part is to that of 
the real talkers what the instrumental accompani- 
ment is in a tiio or quartette of vocalists. 

What do I mean by the real talkers ? — W^hy, 

the people wilh fresh ideas, of course, and plenty of 
good warm words to dress them in. Facts always 
yield the place of honor, in conversation, to thoughts 
about facts ; but if a false note is uttered, down 
comes the finger on the key and the man of facts 
asserts his true dignity. I have known three of these 
men of facts, at least, who were .alwiays formidable, 
— and one of them was tyrannical. 

Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appear- 
ance on a particul^ occasion ; but these men knew 
something about almost everything, and never made 
mistakes. — He ? Veneers in first-rate style. The 
mahogany scales off now and then in spots, and then 

you see the cheap light stuff. — I found very fine 

in conversational information, the other day when 
we were in company. The talk ran upon moun- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. ifij 

tains. He was wonderfully well acquainted with 
the leading facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and 
the Aj)palachians; he had nothing in particular to 
say about Ararat, Ben Nevis, and various other 
mountains that were mentioned. By and by some 
Revolutionary anecdote came up, and he showed 
singular familiarity with the lives of the Adamses, 
and gave many details relating to Major Andr(^. A 
point of Natural History being suggested, he gave 
an excellent account of the air-bladder of fishes. He 
was very full uj^on the subject of agriculture, but 
retired from the conversation when horticulture was 
introduced in the discussion. So he seemed well 
acquainted with the geology of anthracite, but did 
not pretend to know ait)'tiiing of other kinds of coal. 
There was something so odd about the extent and 
limitations of his knowledge, that I suspected all at 
once what might be the meaning of it, and waited 
till I got an opportunity. — Have you seen the " New 
American Cyclopaedia ? " said I. — I have, he replied ; 
I received an early copy. — How far does it go ? — He 
turned red, and answered, — To Araguay. — Oh, said 
I to myself, — not quite so far as Ararat ; — that is the 
reason he knew nothing about it ; but he must have 
read all +he rest straight through, and, if he can 
remember what is in this volume until he has read 
all those that are to come, he will know more than I 
ever thought he would. 

Since I had this experience, I hear that somebody 



IGG THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

else has related a similar story. I didn't borrow it, 
for all that. — I made a comparison at table some 
time since, which has often been quoted and received 
many compliments. It was that of the mind of a 
bigot to the pupil of the eye; the morp lig^it you 
pour on it, the more it contracts. The simile is a 
very obvious, and, I suppose I may now say, a 
happy one ; for it has just been shown me that it 
occurs in a Preface to certain Political Poems of 
Thomas Moore's published long before my remark 
was repeated. When a person of fair character for 
literary honesty uses an image such as another has 
employed before him, the presumption is, that he has 
struck upon it independently, or unconsciously re- 
called it, supposing it his own.' 

It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, 
whether a comparison which suddenly suggests itself 
is a new conception or a recollection. I told you 
the other day that I never wrote a line of verse that 
seemed to me comparatively good, but it appeared 
old at once, and often as if it had been borrowed. 
But I confess I never suspected the above compari- 
son of being old, except from the fact of its obvious- 
ness. It is proper, however, that I proceed by a 
formal instrument to relinquish all claim to any prop- 
erty in an idea given to the world at about the time 
when I had just joined the class in which Master 
Thomas Moore was then a somewhat advanced 
scholar. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ] 07 

I, therefore, in full possession of my native lionesty, 
but knowing the liability of all men to be elected to 
^public office, and for that reason feeling uncertain 
how soon I may be in danger of losing it, do hereby 
renounce all claim to being considered ..he first per- 
son who gave utterance to a certain simile or com- 
parison referred to in the accompanying documents, 
and relating to the pupil of the eye on the one part 
W and the mind of the bigot on the other. I hereby 
W relinquish all glory and profit, and especially all 
claims to letters from autograph collectors, founded 
upon my supposed property in the above comparison, 
— knowing well, that, according to \\m laws of iiler- 
ature, they who speak first hold the fee of the thing 
said. I do also agree that all Editors of Cyclopedias 
and Biographical Dictionaries, all Publishers of Re- 
views and Papers, and all Critics writing therein, 
shall be at liberty to retract or qualify any opinion 
predicated on the supposition that I was the sole and 
undisputed author of the above comparison. But, 
inasmuch as I do affirm that the comparison afore- 
said was uttered by me in the firm belief that it was 
new and wholly my own, and as I have good reason 
to think that I had never seen or heard it when first 
expressed by me, and as it is well known that diller 
ent persons Inay independently utter the same idea^ 
— as is evinced by that familiar line from Dona 
tus,- 

" Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt," — 



153 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BI?EAKFAST-TABLE. 

now, therefore, I do request by this instrument that 
all well-disposed persons will abstain from asserting 
or implying that I am open to any accusation what- 
soever touching the said comparison, and, if they 
have so asserted or implied, that they will have the 
manliness forthwith to retract the same assertion or 
insinuation. 

I think few persons have a greater disgust for 
plagiarism thun myself. If I had even suspected 
that the idea in question was borrowed, I should 
have disclaimed originality, or mentioned the coin- 
cidence, as I once did in a case where I had happened 
to hit on an idea of Swift's. — But what shall I do 
about these verses I was going to read you ? I am 
afraid that half mankind would accuse me of steal- 
ing their thoughts, if I printed them. I am convinced 
that several of you, especially if you are getting a 
little on in life, will recognize some of these senti- 
ments as having passed through your consciousness 
at some time. I can't help it, — it is too late now 
The verses are wrritten, and you must have thenL 
Listen, then, and you shall hear 

WHAT WE ALL THINK. 

That age was older once than now 

In spite of locks untimely shed, 
Or silvered on the youthful brow ; 

That babes make love and children wed. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 169 

That sunshine had a heavenly alow, 

Which faded with those " good old days,** 

WLen enters came with deeper snow, 
And autumns with a softer haze. 



Tliat — mother, sister, wife, or child — 

The " best of women " each has known. 
Were schoolboys ever hiOf so wild ? 

How young the grandpapas have grown 

That hut for this our souls were free, 
And but for that our lives were blest; 

That in some season yet to be 

Our cares will leave us time to rest. 

AVhene'er we fjroan with ache or pain, 
Some common ailment of the race, — 

Though doctors think the matter plain, — 
That ours is " a peculiar case." 

That when like babes with fingers burned 
"We count one bitter maxim more, 

-Our lesson all the world has learned, 
And men are wiser than before. 

That when we sob o'er fancied woes, 

The angels hovering overhead 
Count every pitying drop that flows 

And love us for the tears we shed. 

That when we stand w'th tearless eye 
And turn the beggar from our door, 

They still approve us when we sigh, 
" A.h, had I but one thousand more ! * 
8 



(70 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE. 

Tlidt weakness smoothed the path of sin, 
In half the slips our youth lias known ; 

And whatsoe'er its blame has been, 

That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown. 

Tliough temples crowd the crumbled brink 
O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, 

Their tablets bold with icliat we ihinkj 
Their echoes dumb to tvhat we know ; 

That one unquestioned text we read, 
All doubt beyond, all fear above, 

Nor crackllug pile nor cursing creed 
Caa burn or blot it : God is Lovk 1 



VIL 

[This particular record is noteworthy principally 
for containing a paper by my friend, the Professor, 
with a poem or two annexed or intercalated. I 
would suggest to young persons that they should 
pass over it for the present, and read, instead of it, 
that story about the young man who was in love 
with the young lady, and in great trouble for some- 
thing like nine pages, but happily married on the 
tenth page or thereabouts, which, I take it for gi-anted, 
will be contained in the periodical where this is 
found, unless it differ from all other publications of 
the kind. Perhaps, if such young people will lajf 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 171 

the number aside, and take it up ten years, or a little 
more, from the present time, tliey may find some- 
thing in it for their advantage. They can't possibly 
understand it all now.] 

My friend, the Professor, began talking with me 
one day in a dreary sort of way. I couldn't get at 
the difficulty for a good while, but at last it turned 
out that somebody had been calling him an old man 
—He didn't mind his students calling him the old 
man, he said. That was a technical expression, and 
he thought that he remembered hearing it applied to 
himself when he was about twenty-five. It may be 
considered as a familiar and sometimes endearin*' 
appellation. An Irishwoman calls her husband " the 
old man," and he returns the caressing expression by 
speaking of her as "the old woman." But now, 
said he, just suppose a case like one of these. A 
young stranger is overheard talking of you as a very 
nice old gentleman. A friendly and genial critic 
speaks of your green old age as illustrating the truth 
of some axiom you had uttered with reference to 
that period of life. What / call an old man is a 
person with a smooth, shining crown and a fringe of 
scattered white hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny 
days, stooping as he walks, bearing a cane, moving 
cautiously and slowly ; telling old stories, smiling at 
present follies, living in a narrow world of dry habits ; 
one that remains waking when others lave dropped 
asleep, and keeps a little night-lamp-flame of lif» 



172 I'HE AaTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

burning year after year, if the lamp is not upset, 
and there is only a careful hand held round it to pre* 
vent the puffs of wind from blowing the flame out. 
That's what I call an old man. 

Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to tell me 
that I have got to that yet ? Why, bless you, I am 
several years short of the time when — [I knew what 
was coming, and could hardly keep from laughing; 
twenty years ago he used to quote it as one of those 
absurd speeches men of genius will make, and now 
he is going to argue from it] — several years short of 
the time when Balzac says that men are — mosl^ -you 
know — dangerous to — the hearts of — in short, most 
to be dreaded by duennas that have charge of sus- 
ceptible females. — What age is that? said I, statisti- 
cally. — Fifty-two years, answered the Professor. — 
Balzac ought to know, said I, if it is true that Goe- 
the said of him that each of his stories must have 
^ been dug out of a woman's heart. But fifty-two is 
a high figure. 

Stand in the light of the window. Professor, said 
I. — The Professor took up the desired position. — 
You have white hairs, I said. — Had 'em any time 
these twenty years, said the Professor. — And the 
crow's-foot, — pes anserinus, rather. — The Professor 
smiled, as I wanted him to, and the folds radiated 
like the ridges of a half-opened fan, from the outer 
corner of the eyes to ttie temples. — And the calipers 
said I. — What are the calipers ? he asked, curiously 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 173 

—Why, the parenthesis, said I. — Parenthesis? said the 
Professor ; what's that ? — Why, look in the glass 
when you are disposed to laugh, and see if your 
mouth isn't framed in a couple of crescent lines, — 
80, my boy ( ). — It's all nonsense, said the Professor ; 
just look at my biceps ; — and he began pulling off 
his coat to ^how me his arm. Be careful, said I ; 
you can't bear exposure to the air, at your time of 
life, as you could once. — I will box with you, said the 
Professor, row with you, walk with you, ride with 
you, swim with you, or sit at table with you, for 
fifty dollars a side. — Pluck survives stamina, I an- 
swered. 

The Professor went off a little out of humor. A 
few weeks afterwards he came in, looking very good- 
natured, and brought me a paper, which I have here, 
and from which I shall read you some portions, if 
you don't object. He had been thinking the matter 
over, he said, — had read Cicero " De Senectute," and 
made up his mind to meet old age half way. These 
were some of his reflections that he had written 
down ; so here you have 

THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER. 
There is no doubt when old age begins. The 
human body is a furnace which keeps in blast three- 
score years and ten, more or less. It burns about 
three hundred pounds of carbon a year, (besides other 
Tuel,) when in fair working order, according to a great 



174 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

cnemist's estimate. When the fire slackens, life de- 
clines ; when it goes out, we are dead. 

It has been shown by some noted French experi- 
menters, that the amount of combustion increases up 
to about the thirtieth year, remains stationary to 
about forty-five, and then diminishes. This last is 
the point where old age starts from. The great fact 
of physical life is the perpetual commerce with the 
elements, and the fire is the measure of it. 

About this time of life, if food is plenty where you 
live, — for that, you know, regulates matrimony, — 
you may be expecting to find yourself a grandfather 
some fine morning ; a kind of domestic felicity that 
gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as 
among the not remotely possible events. 

I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. John- 
son wrote to Thrale, telling her about life's declining 
from thirty-five ; the furnace is in full blast for ten 
years longer, as I have said. The Romans came 
very near the mark ; their age of enlistment reached 
from seventeen to forty-six years. 

What is the use of fighting against the seasons, 
or the tides, or the movements of the planetary bod- 
ies, or this ebb in the wave of life that flows through 
us ? We are old fellows from the moment the fire 
begins to go out. Let us always behave like gentle* 
men when we are introduced to new acquaintance. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 175 

Iticipit Allegoria Senectutis. 

Old Age, this is Mr. Professor ; Mr. Professor, thii 
is Old Age. 

Old Age. — INIr. Professor, I hope to see you well. 
I have known you for some time, though I think 
you did not know me. Shall we walk down tne 
street together ? 

Professor (drawing back a little). — We can talk 
more quietly, perhaps, in my study. Will you tell 
me how it is you seem to be acquainted with every- 
body you are introduced to, though he evidently 
considers you an entire stranger? 

Old Age. — I make it a rule never to force myself 
upon a person's recognition until I have known him 
at least y?ye years. 

Professor. — Do you mean to say that you have 
known me so long as that ? 

Old Age. I do. I left my card on you longer 
ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it; yet 
I see you have it with you. 

Professor. — Where ? 

Old Age. — There, between your eyebrows, — three 
straight lines running up and down; ail the probate 
courts know that token, — " Old Age, his mark." Put 
your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and 
your middle finger on the inner end of the other 
eyebrow ; now separate the fingers, and you will 
smooth out my sign-manual; that's the way you 
used to look before I left my card on you. 



176 THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Professor. — What message do people generally 
fiend back when you first call on them ? 

Old Age. — Not at home. Then I loa'^e a card and 
go. Next year I call ; get the same answer ; leave 
another card. So for five oi six, — sometimes ten 
years or more. At last, if they don't let me in, I 
break in through the fronL door or the windows. 

We talked together in this way some time. Then 
Old Age said again, — Come, let us walk down the 
street together, — ana offered me a cane, an eyeglass, 
a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes. — No, much ob- 
liged to you, said 1. I don't want those things, and 
I had a little rather talk with you here, privately, in 
my study. So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way 
and walked out alone ; — got a fall, caught a cold, 
was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think 
over this whole matter. 

Explicit Allegoria Senectutis. 

We have settled when old age begins. Like all 
Nature's processes, it is gentle and gradual in its 
approaches, strewed with illusions, and all its little 
griefs soothed by natural sedatives. But the iron 
hand is not less irresistible because it wears the 
velvet glove. The button-wood throws off its bark 
in large flakes, which one may find lying at its foot, 
pushed out, and at last pushed off, by that tranquil 
movement from beneath, which is too slow to be 
seen, but too powerful to be arrested. One finds 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 177 

them always, but one rarely sees them fall. So it 
is our youth drops from us, — scales off, sapless and 
lifeless, and lays bare the tender and immature fresh 
growth of old age. Looked at collectively, the 
changes of old age appear as a series of personal 
insults and indignities, terminating at last in death, 
which Sir Thomas Browne has called " the very dis- 
grace and ignominy of our natures." 

My lady's cheek can boast no more 
The cranberry white and pink it wore ; 
And where her shining locks divide, 
The parting line is all too wide 

No, no, — this will never do. Talk about men, if 
you will, but spare the poor women. 

We have a brief description of seven stages of 
life by a remarkably good observer. It is very pre- 
sumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been 
struck with the fact that life admits of a natural 
analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods. 
Taking the five primary divisions, infancj^, childhood, 
youth, manhood, old age, each of these has its own 
three periods of immaturity, complete development, 
and decline. I recognize on old baby at once, — with 
its " pipe and mug," (a stick of candy and a porrin 
ger,) — so does everybody ; and an old child shedding 
its milk-teeth is only a little prototype of the old man 
shedding his permanent ones. Fifty or the*-eaboutg 
is only the childhood, as it were, of old age; the 

8* 



178 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABLE. 

graybeard youngster must be weaned from his late 
suppers now. So you will see that you have to 
make fifteen stages at any rate, and that it would 
not be hard to make twenty-five ; five primary, each 
with five secondary divisions. 

The infancy and childhood of commencing old 
age have the same ingenuous simplicity and de- 
lightful unconsciousness about them as the first 
stage of the earlier periods of life shows. The great 
delusion of mankind is in supposing that to be in- 
dividual and exceptional which is universal and ac- 
cording to law. A person is always startled when 
he hears himself seriously called an old man for the 
first time. 

Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as 
sailors are hurried on board of vessels, — in a state 
of intoxication. We are hustled into maturity reel- 
ing with our passions and imaginations, and we 
have drifted far away from port before we awake out 
of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity 
into old age, without our knowing where we are 
going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we 
stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing 
until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse 
our comatose brains out of their stupid trances. 

There is one mark of age that strikes me more 
than any of the physical ones ;— I mean the forma- 
tion of Habits. An old man who shrinks into him- 
self falls into ways that become as positive and aa 



IHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 1/9 

much beyond the reach of outside inflnences as if they 
were governed by clock-work. The animal functions, 
as the physiologists call them, in distinction from 
the organic^ tend, in the process of deterioration to 
which age and neglect united gradually lead them, 
to assume the periodical or rhythmical type of move- 
ment. Every man's heart (this organ belongs, you 
know, to the organic system) has a regular mode of 
action ; but I know a great many men whose brains^ 
and all their voluntary existence flowing from their 
brains, have a sr/sfole and diastole as regular as that 
of the heart itself. Habit is the approximation of 
the animal system to the organic. It is a confession 
of failure in the highest function of being, which 
involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view 
of all existing circumstances. But habit, you see, 
is an action in present circumstances from past mo- 
tives. It is substituting a vis a terg-o for the evolu- 
tion of living force. 

When a man, instead of burning up three hundred 
pounds of carbon a year, has got down to two hun- 
dred and fifty, it is plain enough he must economize 
force somewhere. Now habit is a labor-saving in- 
vention which enables a man to get along with less 
fuel, — that is all ; for fuel is force, you know, just aa 
much in the page I am WTitingfor you as in the loco- 
motive or the legs that carry it to you. Carbon is -the 
eame thing, whether you call it wood, or coal, or bread 
and cheese A reverend gentleman demurred to this 



180 TfSE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAR.FAST-TABLE. 

statement, — as if, because combustion is asserted ta 
be the sine qua non of thought, therefore thought ia 
alleged to be a purely chemical process. Facts of 
chemistry are one thing, I told him, and facts of con- 
sciousness another. It can be proved to him, by a 
very simple analysis of some of his spare elements, 
that every Sunday, when he does his duty faithfully, 
he uses up more phosphorus out of his brain and 
nerves than on ordinary days. Bat then he had his 
choice whether to do his duty, or to neglect it, and 
save his phosphorus and other combustibles. 

It follows from all this that the formation of habits 
ought naturally to be, as it is, the special character- 
istic of age. As for the muscular powers, they pass 
their maximum long before the time when the true 
decline of life begins, if we may judge by the expe- 
rience of the ring. A man is " stale," I think, in 
their language, soon after thirty, — often, no doubt, 
much earlier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profes- 
sion are exceedingly apt to keep their vital fire burn- 
ing with the bloioer vp, 

So far without Tully. But in the mean time 

I have been reading the treatise, " De Senectute." It 
is not long, but a leisurely performance. The old 
gentleman was sixty-three years of age when he 
addressed it to his friend T. Pomponius Atticus, 
Eq., a person of distinction, some two or three years 
older. We read it when we are schoolboys, forget 
all about it for thirty years, and then take it up 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TOE BREAKFAST-TABLE. jgi 

again by a natural instinct, — provided always that 
we read Latin as we drink water, without stopping 
to taste it, as all of us who ever learned it at school 
or colleci^e ouo:ht to do. 

Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A good 
deal of it is what would be called in vulgar plirase 
"slow." It unpacks and unfolds incidental illustra- 
tions which a modern wViter would look at the back 
of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole. I think ancient 
classics and ancient people are alike in the tendency 
to this kind of expansion. 

An old doctor came to me once (this is literal fact) 
with some contrivance or other for people with 
broken kneepans. As the patient would be confmed 
for a good while, hi; might find it dull work to sit 
with his hands in his lap. Reading, the ingenious 
inventor suggested, would be an agreeable mode of 
passing the time. He mentioned, in his written ac- 
count of his contrivance, various works that might 
amuse the weary hour. I remember only three, — 
Don Quixote, 'J'om Jones, and Watts on the Mind, 

It is not generally understood that Cicero's essay 
was delivered as a lyceum lecture, (concio popularis^) 
at the Temple of Mercury. The journals (papyri) 
of the day (" Tempora Quotidiana," — *^ Tribunus 
Quirinalis," — " Pracco Romanus," and the rest) gave 
abstracts of it, one of which I have translated and 
modernized, as being a substitute for the analysis I 
intended to make. 



182 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

IV. Kal. Mart 

The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last even* 
ing, was well attended by the eHte of our great city. 
Two hundred thousand sestertia were thought to 
have been represented in the house. The doora 
were besieged by a mob of shabby fellows, (illotum 
vulgus^) who were at length quieted after two or 
three had been somewhat roughly handled (gladio 
jngulati). The speaker was the well-known Mark 
Tully, Eq.,— the subject Old Age. Mr. T. has a 
\ean and scraggy person, with a very unpleasant ex- 
crescence upon his nasal feature, from which his 
nickname of chick-pea (Cicero) is said by some to 
be derived. As a lecturer is public property, we may 
remark, that his outer garment (^o^a) was of cheap 
stuff and somewhat worn, and that his general style 
and appearance of dress and manner [habitus^ vestU 
tusqiie) were somewhat provincial. 

The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue 
between Cato and Laelius. We found the first por- 
tion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for re- 
freshment (pocula qucedam vini). — All want to reach 
old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it; 
therefore they are donkeys. — The lecturer will allow 
us to say that he is the donkey ; we know we shall 
grumble at old age, but we want to live through 
youth and manhood, in spite of the troubles we shall 
groan over. — There was considerable prosing as to 
what old age can do and can't. — True, but not new 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 183 

Certainly, old folks can't jump, — break the necks of 
their thigh-bones, (femorum cervices^) if they do; 
can't crack nuts with their teeth; can't climb a 
greased pole (malum inunctum scandere non possuiU) ; 
but they can tell old stories and give you good ad- 
vice ; if they know what you have made up your 
mind to do when you ask them. — All this is well 
enough, but won't set the Tiber on fire {Tiberim 
accenderc ncqiiaquam potest.) 

There were some clever things enough, (dicta hand 
inepta,) a few of which are worth reporting. — Old 
people are accused of being forgetful ; but they never 
forget where they have put their money. — Nobody is 
so old he doesn't think he can live a year. — The 
lecturer quoted an ancient maxim, — Grow old early, 
if you would be old long, — but disputed it. — Author- 
ity, he thought, was the chief privilege of age. — It is 
not great to have money, but fine to govern those 
that have it. — Old age begins at forty-six years, 
according to the common opinion. — It is not every 
kind of old age or of wine that grows sour with time. 
-Some excellent remarks were made on immortal- 
ity, but mainly borrowed from and credited to Plato. 
— Several pleasing anecdotes were told. — Old Milo, 
champion of the heavy weights in his day, looked at 
his arms and whimpered, " They are dead." Not so 
dead as you, you old fool, — says Cato ; — you never 
were good for anything but for ^uur shoulders and 
flanks. — Pisistratus asked Solon what made him 
daxe to be so obstinate. Old age, said Solon. 



[84 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and a 
credit to our culture and civilization. — The reporter 
goes on to state that there will be no lecture next 
week, on account of the expected combat between 
the bear and the barbarian. Betting (sponsio) two 
to one {duo ad unum) on the bear. 

After all, the most encouraging things I find 



in the treatise, " De Senectute," are the stories of 
men who have found new occupations when grow- 
ing old, or kept up their common pursuits in the 
extreme period of life. Cato learned Greek when 
he was old, and speaks of wiyhing to learn the fiddle, 
or some such instrument, (Jidibus,) after the example 
of Socrates. Solon learned something new, every 
day, in his old age, as he gloried to proclaim. Cy- 
rus pointed out with pride and pleasure the trees he 
had planted with his own hand. [I remember a 
pillar on the Duke of Northumberland's estate at 
Alnwick, with an inscription in similar words, if not 
the same. That, like other country pleasures, never 
wears out. None is too rich, none too poor, none 
too young, none too old to enjoy it.] There is a New 
England story I have heard more to the point, how- 
ever, than any of Cicero's. A young farmer was 
urged to set out somt apple-trees. — No, said he, 
they are too long growing, and I don't want to plant 
for other people. The young farmer's father waa 
spoken to about it, but he, with better reason, alleged 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. igi 

that apple-trees were slow and life was fleeting. 
At last some one mentioned it to the old grandfather 
of the young farmer. He had nothing else to do, — 
BO he stuck in some trees. He lived long enough to 
drink barrels of cider made from the apples that 
grew on those trees. 

As for myself, after visiting a friend lately, — [Do 
emember all the time that tliis is the Professor's 
paper.] — I satisfied myself that I had better concede 
the fact that — my contemporaries are not so young 
as they have been, — and that, — awkward as it is, — 
science and history agree in telling me that I can 
claim the immunities and must own tlie humiliations 
of the early stage of senility. Ah I but we have all 
gone down the hill together. The dandies of my 
time have split their waistbands and taken to high- 
low shoes. The beauties of my recollections — where 
are they ? They have run the gantlet of the years 
as well as I. First the years pelted them with red 
roses till their cheeks were all on fire. By and by 
they began throwing white roses, and that morn- 
ing flush passed away. At last one of the years 
threw a snow-ball, and after that no year let the poor 
girls pass without throwing snow-balls. And then 
came rougher missiles, — ice and stones ; and from 
time to time an arrow whistled, and down went one 
of the poor girls. So there are but feW left ; and we 
don't call those few girls ^ but 

Ah, me ! ne^e am I groaning just as the o d Greek 



135 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sighed At, at! and the old Roman, Eheu ! I have no 
doubt we should die of shame and grief at the in- 
dignities offered us by age, if it were not that we see 
so many others as badly or worse off than ourselves. 
We always compare ourselves with our contempo- 
raries. 

[I was interrupted in my reading just here. Be- 
fore I began at the next breakfast, I read them these 
verses ; — I hope you will like them, and get a useful 
'.esson from them.] 

THE LAST BLOSSOM. 

Though young no more, we still would dream 

Of* beauty's dear deluding wiles ; 
The leagues of life to graybeards seem 

Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles. 

Who knows a woman's wild caprice ? 

It played with Goethe's silvered hair, 
And many a Holy Father's " niece ** 

Has softly smoothed the papal chair. 

When sixty bids us sigh in vain 

To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, 
We think upon those ladies twain 

Who loved so well the tough old Dean. 

We see the Patriarch's wintry face, 

The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, 
And dream that Youth and Age embrace, 

As April violets fill with snow. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TAl LE. 187 

Tranced in her Lord's Olympian smile 
. His lotus-lonng Memphiau lies, — 
The musky daughter of the Nile 
"With plaited hair and almond eyes. 

Mluht we but share one wild caress 

Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall, 
And Earth's brown, clinging lips impre* 

The long cold kiss that waits us all 1 

^ly l)0?om heaves, reniombering yet 

The morning of that blissful day 
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met, 

And gave my raptured soul away. 

Flung from her eyes of purest blue, 

A lasso, with its iraping chain 
Light as a loop of hirkspurs, llew 

O'er sense and spirit, heart and braio. 

Thou com'st to cheer my waning age, 

Sweet vision, waited for so long 1 
Dove that woukl seek the poet's cage 

Lured by the magic breath of song ! 

She blushes ! Ah, reluctant maid. 

Love's drapeau rmige the truth has told I 

O'er girlhood's yielding barricade 

Floats the ^reat Leveller's crimson fold! 

Come to my arms ! — love heeds not yean; 

No frost the bud of passion knows. — 
Ha ! what is this my frenzy hears ? 

A /oicc behind me uttered, — Rose ! 



188 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLR 

Sweet was her smile, — but not for me ; 

Alas, when woman looks too kind. 
Just turn your foolish head and see, — 

Some youth is walking close behind ! 

As to giving vp because the almanac or the Fam« 
ily-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have 
no intention of doing any such thing. I grant you 
that I burn less carbon than some years ago. I see 
people of my standing really good for nothing, de- 
crepit, effete, la Icvre inferieure dejd pendante, with 
what little life they have left mainly concentrated in 
their epigastrium. But as the disease of old age is 
epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and everybody that 
lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to 
say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I 
treat the malady in my own case. 

First. As I feel, that, when I have anything to do, 
there is less time for it than when I was younger, 1 
find that I give my attention more thoroughly, and 
use my time more economically than ever before ; 
so that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my 
earlier days. I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a 
new study. I took up a difficult language a very 
few years ago with good success, and think of math- 
ematics and metaphysics by-and-by. 

Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a gooa many 
neglected privileges and pleasures within my reach, 
and requiring only a little courage to enjoy them. 
You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. IgJ 

Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle, 
when I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, 
and satisfied myself that I could get much comfort, 
if not much music, out of it. 

Thirdly. I have found that some ol those active 
exercises, which are commonly thought to belong to 
young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much later 
period. 

A young friend has lately written an admirable 
article in one of the journals, entitled, " Saints and 
their Bodies." Approving of his general doctrines, 
and grateful for his records of personal experience, I 
cannot refuse to add my own experimental confirm- 
ation of his eulogy of one particular form of active 
exercise and amusement, namely, boating. For the 
past nine years, I have rowed about, during a good 
part of the summer, on fresh or salt water. My 
present fleet on the river Charles consists of three 
row-boats. 1. A small flat-bottomed skiff* of the 
shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys. 2. 
A fancy " dory " for two pairs of sculls, in which I 
sometimes go out with my young folks. 3. My own 
particular w^ater-sulky, a " skeleton " or " shell " race- 
boat, twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, 
which boat I pull with ten-foot sculls, — alone, of 
course, as it holds but one, and tips him out, if he 
doesn't mind what he is about, in this I glide 
around the Back Bay, down the stream, up the 
Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up the Mys* 



190 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

tic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats, 
which leave a swell after them delightful to rock 
upon ; I linger under the bridges, — those " caterpillar 
bridges," as my brother professor so happily called 
them ; rub against the black sides of old wood- 
Bchooners ; cool down under the overhanging stern 
of some tall Indiaman ; stretch across to the Navy- 
Yard, where the sentinel warns me off from the 
Ohio, — just as if I should hurt her by lying in her 
shadow ; then strike out into the harbor, where the 
water gets clear and the air smells of the ocean, — 
till all at once I remember, that, if a west wind 
blows up of a sudden, I shall drift along past the 
islands, out of sight of the dear old State-house, — 
plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home, 
but no chair drawn up at the table, — all the dear 
people waiting, waiting, waiting, while the boat is 
sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, where 
there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't want 
my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in 
company with devil's-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead 
horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I turn about 
and flap my long, narrow wings for home. When 
the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid 
fight to get through the bridges, but always make it 
a rule to beat, — though I have been jammed up into 
pretty tight places at times, and was caught once 
between a vessel swinging round and the pier, until 
our bones (the boat's, that is) cracked as if we had 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 19^ 

been in the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my 
moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the 
rowing-dress, dash under the green tanslucent wave, 
return to the garb of civilization, walk through my 
Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, 
and, reaching my habitat, in consideration of my 
advanced period of life, indulge in the Elysian aban- 
donment of a huge recumbent chair. 

When I have established a pair of well -pronounced 
feathering-calluses on my thumbs, when I am in 
training so that I can do my fifteen miles at a stretch 
without coming to grief in any way, when I can 
perform my mile in eight minutes or a little less, then 
I feel as if 1 had old Time's head in chancery, and 
could give it to him at my leisure. 

I do not deny the attraction of walking. I have 
bored this ancient city through and through in my 
daily travels, until I know it as an old' inhabitant of 
a Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who, 
in the course of these rambles, discovered that re- 
markable avenue called Myrtle Street^ stretching in 
one long line from east of the Reservoir to a precipi- 
tous and rudely paved cliff which looks down on the 
grim abode of Science, and beyond it to the far 
hills ; a promenade so delicious in its repose, so 
cheerfully varied with glimpses down the northern 
slope into busy Cambridge Street with its iron river 
of the horse-railroad, and wheeled barges gliding 
back and forward over it, — so delightfully closing at 



1,92 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

its western extremity in sunny courts and passages 
where I know peace, and beauty, and virtue, and 
serene old age must be perpetual tenants, — so allur- 
ing to all who desire to take their daily stroll, in the 
words of Dr. Watts, — 

"Alike unknowing and unknown/*— 

that nothing but a sense of duty would have promp- 
ted me to reveal the secret of its existence. I 
concede, therefore, that walking is an immeasura- 
hxj fine invention, of which old age ought constantly 
to avail itself. 

Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable 
to sole-leather. The principal objection to it is of a 
financial character. But you may be sure that Ba- 
con and Sydenham did not recommend it for nothing. 
One's hepar^ or, in vulgar language, liver, — a ponder- 
ous organ, weighing some three or four pounds, — 
goes up and down like the dasher of a churn in the 
midst of the other vital arrangements, at every step 
of a trotting horse. The brains also are shaken up 
like coppers in a money-box. Riding is good, for 
those that are born with a silver-mounted bridle in their 
hand, and can ride as much and as often as they like, 
without thinking all the time they hear that steady 
grinding sound as the horse's jaws triturate with 
calm lateral movement the bank-bUls and promises 
to pay upon which it is notorious that the profligate 
animal in question feeds day and night. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 193 

Instead, however, of considering these kinds of ex- 
ercise in this empirical way, I will devote a brief 
space to an examination of them in a more scientific 
form. 

The. pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely 
physical impression, and secondly to a sense of power 
in action. The first source of pleasure varies of 
course with our condition and the state of the sur- 
rounding circumstances ; the second with the amount 
and kind of power, and the extent and kind of action 
In all forms of active exercise there are three powers 
simultaneously in action,--the will, the muscles, and 
the intellect. Each of these predominates in differ- 
ent kinds of exercise. In walking, the will and mus- 
cles are so accustomed to work together and perform 
their task with so little expenditure of force, that the 
intellect is left comparatively free. The mental 
pleasure in walking, as such, is in the sense of power 
over all our moving machinery. But in riding, I 
have the additional pleasure of governing another 
will, and my muscles extend to the tips of the ani- 
mal's ears and to his four hoofs, instead of stopping 
at my hands and feet Now in this extension of my 
volition and my physical frame into another animal, 
my tyrannical instincts and my desire for heroic 
strength are at once gratified. When the horse 
ceases to have a will of his own and his muscles 
require no special attention on your part, then you 
may live on horseback as Wesley did, and write 



194 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

sermons or take naps, as you like. But you wiL 
observe, that, in riding on horseback, you always 
have a feeling, that, after all, it is not you that do 
the work, but the animal, and this prevents the satis- 
faction from being complete. 

Now let us look at the conditions of rowing. I 
won't suppose you to be disgracing yourself in one 
of those miserable tubs, tugging in which is to row- 
ing the true boat what riding a cow is to bestriding 
an Arab. You know the Esquimaux kayak., (if that 
is the name of it,) don't you ? Look at that model 
of one over my door. Sharp, rather ? — On the con- 
trary, it is a lubber to the one you and I must have ; 
a Dutch fish-wife to Psyche, contrasted with what I 
will tell you about. — Our boat, then, is something 
of the shape of a pickerel, as you look down upon 
his back, he lying in the sunshine just where the 
sharp edge of the water cuts in among the lily-pads. 
It is a kind of a giant pod., as one may say, — tight 
everywhere, except in a little place in the middle, 
where you sit. Its length is from seven to ten yards, 
and as it is only from sixteen to thirty inches wide 
in its widest part, you understand why you want 
those " outriggers," or projecting iron frames with 
the rowlocks in which the oars play. My rowlocks 
are five feet apart; double the greatest width of the 
boat. 

Here you are, then, afloat with a body a rod and 
a half long, with arrr s, or wings, as you may choose 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 195 

to call them, stretching more than twenty feet fron» 
tip to tip ; every volition of yours extending as per- 
fectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the 
centre strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms 
tingled as far as the broad blades of your oars, — 
oars of spruce, balanced, leathered, and ringed under 
your own special direction. This, in sober earnest, 
is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever 
made or perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails 
without flapping his pinions, so you drift with the 
tide when you will, in the most luxurious form of lo- 
comotion indulged to an embodied spirit. But if your 
blood wants rousing, turn round that stake in the 
river, which you see a mile from here ; and when you 
*:ome in in sixteen minutes, (if you do, for we are 
old boys, and not champion scullers, you remember,) 
then say if you begin to feel a little warmed up or 
not I You can row easily and gently all day, and 
you can row yourself blind and black in the face in 
ten minutes, just as you like. It has been long agreed 
that there is no way in which a man can accomplish 
so much labor with his muscles as in rowing. It is 
in the boat, then, that man finds the largest extension 
of his volitional and muscular existence ; and yet he 
may tax both of them so slightly, in that most deli- 
cious of exercises, that he shall mentally write his 
sermon, or his poem, or recall the remarks he ha? 
made m company and put them in form for the pub- 
lic, as well as in his easy-chair. 



X96 IflE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite 
delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet June 
morning, when the river and bay are smooth as a 
sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it 
up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent 
closing after me like those wounds of angels which 
Milton tells of, but the seam still shining for many a 
long rood behind me. To lie still over the Flats, 
where the waters are shallow, and see the crabs 
crawling and the sculpins gliding busily and silently 
beneath the boat, — to rustle in through the long 
harsh grass that leads up some tranquil creek, — to 
take shelter from the sunbeams under one of the 
thousand-footed bridges, and look down its inter- 
minable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy 
growths, studded with minute barnacles, and belted 
with rings of dark muscles, while overhead streams 
and thunders that other river whose every wave is a 
human soul flowing to eternity as the river below 
flows to the ocean, — lying there moored unseen, in 
loneliness so profound that the columns of Tadmor 
in the Desert could not seem more remote from life, 
—the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whis- 
pering against the half-sunken pillars, — why should 
I tell of these things, that I should live to see my b^ 
loved haunts invaded and the waves blackened with 
boats as with a swarm of water-beetles ? What a 
city of idiots we must be not to have covered this 
glorious bay with gondolas and wherries, as we 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 197 

have just learned to cover the ice in winter with 
skaters ! 

I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stiff- 
jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as 
we can boast in our Atlantic cities never before 
sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. Of the 
females that are the mates of these males I do not 
here speak. I preached my sermon from the lay- 
pulpit on this matter a good while ago. Of course, 
if you heard it, you know my belief is that the total 
climatic influences here are getting up a number of 
new patterns of humanity, some of which are not an 
improvement on the old model. Clipper-built, sharp 
in the bows, long in the spars, slender to look at, 
and fast to go, the ship, which is the great organ of 
our national life of relation, is but a reproduction of 
the typical form which the elements impress upon its 
builder. All this we cannot help; but we can make 
the best of these influences, such as they are. We 
have a few good boatmen, — no good horsemen 
that I hear of, — I cannot speak for cricketing, — 
but as for any great athletic feat performed by 
a gentleman in these latitudes, society would drop a 
man who should run round the Common in five 
minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, single-stick 
olayers, and boxers, we have no reason to be 
ashamed of. Boxing is rough play, but not too 
tough for a hearty young fellow. Anything is better 
than this white-blooded degeneration to which we 
all tend. 



198 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibition 
only last evening. It did my heart good to see thai 
there were a few young and youngish youths left who 
could take care of their own heads in case of emer- 
gency. It is a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolv- 
ing himself into the primitive constituents of his hu- 
manity. Here is a delicate young man now, with 
an intellectual countenance, a slight figure, a sub- 
pallid complexion, a most unassuming deportment, 
a mild adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jon- 
athan fr m between the ploughtails would of course 
expect to handle with perfect ease. Oh, he is taking 
oflf his gold-bowed spectacles ! Ah, he is divesting 
himself of his cravat! Why, he is stripping off his 
coat! Well, here he is, sure enough, in a tight silk 
shirt, and with two things that look like batter pud- 
dings in the place of his fists. Now see that other 
fellow with another pair of batter pudding?, — the big 
one with the broad shoulders ; he will certainly knock 
the little man's head off, if he strikes him. Feinting, 
dodging, stopping, hitting, countering, — little man's 
head not off yet. You might as well try to jump 
upon your own shadow as to hit the little man's in- 
tellectual features. He needn't have taken off the 
gold-bowed spectacles at all. Quick, cautious, 
shifty, nimble, cool, he catches all the fierce lunges 
or gets out of their reach, till his turn comes, and 
then, whack goes one of the batter puddings against 
ihe big one's ribs, and bang goes the other into tha 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 199 

big one's face, and, staggering, shuffling, slipping, 
tripping, collapsing, sprawling, down goes the big 
one in a miscellaneous bundle. — If my young friend, 
whose excellent article I have referred to, could only 
introduce the manly art of self-defence among the 
clergy, I am satisfied that we should have better 
sermons and an infinitely less quarrelsome church- 
miJitant. A bout with the gloves would let ofT the 
ill-nature, and cure the indigestion, which, united, 
have embroiled their subject in a bitter controversy. 
We should then often hear that a point of difference 
between an infallible and a heretic, instead 'of being 
vehemently discussed in a series of newspaper ar 
tides, had been settled by a friendly contest in sev- 
eral rounds, at the close of which the parties shook 
hands and appeared cordially reconciled. 

But boxing you and I are too old for, I am afraid. 
r was for a moment tempted, by the contagion of 
muscular electricity last evening, to try the gloves 
• with the Benicia Boy, who looked in as a friend to 
the noble art ; but remembering that he had twice 
my weight and half my age, besides the advantage 
of his training, I sat still and said nothing. 

There is one other delicate point I wish to speak 
<if with reference to old age. I refer to the use of 
dioptric media which correct the diminished refract- 
ing power of the humors of the eye, — in other words, 
spectacles. I don't use them. All I ask is a large, 
fair type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard 



200 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

of focal distance, and my eyes are as good as ever. 
But if your eyes fail, I can tell you something en- 
couraging. There is now living in New York State 
an old gentleman who, perceiving his sight to fail, 
immediately took to exercising it on the finest print, 
and in this way fairly bullied Nature out of her 
foolish habit of taking liberties at five-and-forty, or 
thereabout. And now this old gentleman performs 
the most extraordinary feats with his pen, showing 
that his eyes must be a pair of microscopes. I 
should be afraid to say to you how much he writes 
in the compass of a half-dime, — whether the Psalms 
or the Gospels, or the Psalms and the Gospels, I 
won't be positive. 

But now let me tell you this. If the time comes 
when you must hiy down the fiddle and the bow, 
because your fingers are too stiff, and drop the ten- 
foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, and, 
after dallying awhile with eye-glasses, come at last 
to the undisguised reality of spectacles, — if the time 
comes when that fire of life we spoke of has burned 
so low that where its flames reverberated there is 
only the sombre stain of regret, and where its coals 
glowed, only the white ashes that cover the embers 
of memory, — don't let your heart grow cold, and you 
may carry cheerfulness and love with you into the 
teens of your second century, if you can last so long 
A.S our friend, the Poet, once said, in some of those 
old-fashioned heroics of his which he keeps for his 
private reading, — 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 201 

Call him not old, whose visionary brain 

Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. 

For him in vain the envious seasons roll 

Who bears eternal summer in his soul. 

If yet the minstrers song, the poet's lay, 

Spring with her birds, or children with their play, 

Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dieam of art 

Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, — 

Turn to the record where his years are told, — 

Count his gray hairs,— .they cannot make him old ! 

End of the Professor's paper. 

[The above essay was not read at one time, but 
In several instalments, and accompanied by various 
comments from different persons at the table. The 
company were in the main attentive, with the excep- 
tion of a little somnolence on the part of the old 
gentleman opposite at times, and a few sly, mail 
cious questions about the " old boys " on the part of 
that forward young fellow who has figured occasion 
ally, not always to his advantage, in these reports. 

On Sunday mornings, in obedience to a feeling 1 
am not ashamed of, I have always tried to give a 
more appropriate character to our conversation. I 
have never read them my sermon yet, and I don't 
know that I shall, as some of them might take my 
convictions as a personal indignity to themselves. 
But having read our company so much of the Pro- 
fessor's talk about age and other subjects connected 
with physical life, I took the next Sunday morning 
to repeat to them the following poem of his, which 

8* 



202 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLF. 

1 have had by me some time. He calls it — I snp 
pose, for his professional friends — The Anatomist^s 
IIvMr* ; but I shall name it — ] 

THE LIVING TEJklPLE. 

Not in the world of light alone, 
^ Where God has built his blazing throne, 
l^or yet alone in earth below, 
With belted seas that come and go, 
And endless isles of sunlit green, 
Is all thy Maker's glory seen : 
Look in upon thy wondrous frame, — 
Eternal wisdom still the same 1 

The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves 
Flows murmuring through its hidden cavea 
Whose streams of brightening purple rush 
Fired with a new and livelier blush, 
While all their burden of decay 
The ebbing current steals away. 
And red with Nature's flame they start 
From the warm fountains of the heart. 

No rest that throbbing slave may ask, 
Forever quivering o'er his task. 
While far and wide a crimson jet 
Leaps forth to fill the woven net 
Which in unnumbered crossing tides 
The flood of burning life divides. 
Then kindling each deca}ing part 
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. 

But warmed with that unchanging flam« 
Behold the outward moving frcime, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST^TABLE 203 

Its living marbles jointed stronsr 
With glistening band and silvery thong, 
And linked to reason's guiding reins 
By myriad rings in trembling chains, 
Each t^raven with the threaded zone 
Which claims it as the master's own. 

See how yon beam of seeming white 
Is braided out of seven-hued light. 
Yet in those lucid globes no ray 
By any chance shall break astray. 
Hark how the rolling surge of sound, 
Arches and spirzds circling round, 
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear 
With music it is heaven to hear. 

Tlion mark the cloven sphere that holds 
All thought in its mysterious folds. 
That feels sensation's faintest thrill 
And tlashes forth the sovereign will ; 
Think on the stormy world that dwells 
Locked in its dim and clustering cells ! 
The lightning gleams of power it sheds 
AlonfT its hollow glassy threads 1 

O Father ! grant thy love divine 
To make these mystic temples thine 1 
When wasting age and wearying strife 
Have sapped the leaning walls of life, 
When darkness gathers over all, 
And the last tottering pillars fall. 
Take the poor dust thy mercy warms 
And mould it into heavenly forms I 



201 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 



VIII. 

[Spring has come. You will find some verses to 
tbat effect at the end of these notes. If you are an 
impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading 
aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh 
verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, 
unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will 
confuse them. Many people can ride on horseback 
who find it hard to get on and to get off without 
assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and 
get into the saddle again, at every parenthesis.] 

The old gentleman who sits opposite, find- 
ing that spring had fairly come, mounted a white 
hat one day, and walked into the street. It seems 
to have been a premature or otherwise exceptionable 
exhibition, not unlike that commemorated by the 
late Mr. Bayly. When the old gentleman came 
home, he looked very red in the face, and complained 
that he had been " ma4,e sport of." By sympathiz- 
ing questions, I learned from him that a boy had 
called him " old daddy," and asked him when he 
had his hat whitewashed. 

This incident led me to make some observations 
at table the next morning, which I here repeat for 
the benefit of the readers of this record. 

The hat is the vulnerable point of the arti* 




THE POBT-OHtrCTK. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205 

ficial integument. I learned this in early boyhood. 
I was once equipped in a hat of Leghorn straw, 
having a brim of much wider dimensions than were 
usual at that time, and sent to school in that portion 
of my native town which lies nearest to this me- 
tropolis. On my way I was met by a " Port-chuck," 
as we used to call the young gentlemen of that 
.ocality, and the following dialogue ensued. 

Tlie Port-chuck. Hullo, You-sir, joo know th* 
wuz gun-to be a race to-morrah ? 

Myself. No. Who's gon-to run, 'n' wher's't gun- 
to be? 

The Port-chuck. Squire Mico 'n' Doctor Wil- 
liams, round the brim o' your hat. 

These two much-respected gentlemen being the 
-)ldest inhabitants at that time, and the alleged race- 
course being out of the question, the Port-chuck* also 
winking and thrusting his tongue into his cheek, I 
perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect 
has been to make me sensitive and observant re- 
specting this article of dress ever since. Here is an 
axiom or two relating to it. 

A hat which has been popped^ or exploded by 
being sat down upon, is never itself again after- 
wards. 

It is a favorite illusion of sanguine natures to be- 
lieve the contrary. 

Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as 
•ts hat. There is always an unnatural calmness 



206 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE* 

about its nap, and an unwholesome gloss, suggestive 
of a wet brush. 

The last efTort of decayed fortune is expended in 
smoothing its dilapidated castor. The hat is the 
ultimwn moriens of " respectability." 

The old gentleman took all these remarks 

and maxims very pleasantly, saying, however, that 
he had forgotten most of his French except the word 
for potatoes, — pummies de tare. — TJltimum moriens, 
I told him, is old Italian, and signifies last thing to 
die. With this explanation he was well contented, 
and looked quite calm when I saw him afterwards 
in the entry with a black hat on his head and the 
white one in his hand. 

1 think myself fortunate in having the Poet 

and • the Professor for my intimates. We are so 
much together, that we no doubt think and talk a 
good deal alike ; yet our points of view are in many 
respects individual and peculiar. You know me 
well enough by this time. I have not talked with 
you so long for nothing and therefore I don't think 
it necessary to draw my own portrait. But let me 
say a word or two about my friends. 

The Professor considers himself, and I consider 
him, a very useful and worthy kind of drudge. I 
think he has a pride in his small technicalities. I 
know that he has a great idea of fidelity ; and 
though I suspect he laughs a little inwardly at times 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 207 

at the grand airs " Science " puts on, as she stands 
marking time, but not getting on, while the trumpets 
are blowing and the big drums beating, — yet 1 am 
sure he has a liking for his specialty, and a respect 
for its cultivators. 

But I'll tell you what the Professor said to the 
Poet the other day. — My boy, said he, I can work 
a great deal cheaper than you, because I keep all my 
goods in the lower story. You have to hoist yours 
into the upper chambers of the brain, and let them 
down again to your customers. I take mine in at 
the level of the ground, and send them off from my 
doorstep almost without lifting. I tell you, the 
higher a man has to carry the raw material of 
thought before he works it up, the more it costs him 
in blood, nerve, and muscle. Coleridge knew all 
this very well when he advised every literary man 
to have a profession. 

Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, 

and sometimes with the other. After a while I get 
tired of both. When a fit of intellectual disgust 
comes over me, I will tell you what I have found 
admirable as a diversion, in addition to boating and 
other amusements which I have spoken of, — that is, 
working at my carpenter's-bench. Some mechanical 
employment is the greatest possible relief, after the 
purely intellectual faculties begin to tire. When I 
Vas quarantined once at Marseilles, I got to work 
immediatelv at carving a wooden wonder of loose 



208 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

rings on a stick, and got so interested in it, that, 
when we were set loose, I " regained my freedom 
with a sigh," because my toy was unfinished. 

There are long seasons when I talk only with the 
Professor, and others when I give myself wholly up 
to the Poet. Now that my winter's work is over, 
and spring is with us, I feel naturally drawn to the 
Poet's company. I don't know anybody more alive 
to life than he is. The passion of poetry seizes on 
him every spring, he says, — yet oftentimes he com- 
plains, that, when he feels most, he can sing least. 

Then a fit of despondency comes over him. — 1 
feel ashamed, sometimes, — said he, the other day, — 
to think how far my worst songs fall below my best. 
It sometimes seems to me, as I know it does to 
others who have told me so, that they ought to be 
all best, — if not in actual execution, at least in plan 
and motive. I am grateful — he continued — for all 
such criticisms. A man is always pleased to have 
his most serious efforts praised, and the highest 
aspect of his nature get the most sunshine. 

Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many 
minds must change their key now and then, on 
penalty of getting out of tune or losing their voices. 
You know, I suppose, — he said, — what is meant by 
complementary colors ? You know the effect, too, 
which the prolonged impression of any one color has 
on the retina. If you close your eyes after looking 
steadily at a red object, you see a green image. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 209 

It is SO with many minds, — I will not say with all. 
After looking at one aspect of external nature, or of 
any form of beauty or truth, when they turn away, 
the complementary aspect of the same object stamps 
itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind. 
Shall they give expression to this secondary mental 
state, or not ? 

When I contemplate — said my friend, the Poet— 
the infinite largeness of comprehension belonging to 
the Central Intelligence, how remote the creative 
conception is from all scholastic and ethical form nice, 
I am led to think that a healthy mind ought to 
change its mood from time to time, and come down 
from its noblest condition, — never, of course, to de- 
grade itself by dwelling upon what is itself debasing, 
but to let its lower faculties have a chance to air and 
exercise themselves. After the first and second floor 
have been out in the bright street dressed in ail tlieir 
splendors, shall not our humble friends in the base- 
ment have their holiday, and the cotton velvet and 
the thin-skinned jewelry — simple adornments, but 
befitting the station of those who wear them — show 
themselves to the crowd, who think them beaiitiful, 
as they ought to, though the people up stairs know 
that they are cheap and perishable? 

1 don't know that I may not bring the Poet 

here, some day or other, and let him speak for him- 
Relf. Still I think I can tell you what he says quite 
i,s well as he could do it.— -Oh, — he said to me, one 



210 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

day, — I am but a hand-organ man, — say rather, a 
hand-organ. Life turns the winch, and fancy or 
accident pulls out the stops. I come under your 
windows, some fine spring morning, and play you 
one of my adagio movements, and some of you say, 
— This is good, — play us so always. But, dear 
friends, if I did not change the stop sometimes, the 
machine would wear out in one part and rust in 
another. How easily this or that tune flows ! — you 
say, — there must be no end of just such melodies in 
him. — I will open the poor machine for you one mo- 
ment, and you shall look. — Ah ! Every note marks 
where a spur of steel has been driven in. It is easy 
to grind out the song, but to plant these bristling 
points which make it was the painful task of time. 

I don't like to say it, — he continued, — but poets 
commonly have no larger stock of tunes than hand- 
organs ; and when you hear them piping up under 
your window, you know pretty well what to expect. 
The more stops, the better. Do let them all be pulled 
out in their turn ! 

So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me one of 
his stateliest songs, and after it a gay chanson, and 
then a string of epigrams. All true, — he said, — all 
flowers of his soul ; only one with the corolla spread, 
and another with its disk half opened, and the third 
with the heart-leaves covered up and only a petal or 
trwo showing its tip through the calyx. The water- 
lily is the type of the poet's soul, — he told me. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ^U 

-What do you think, Sir, — said the divinity- 



student, — opens the souls of poets most fully ? 

Why, there must be the internal force and the ex- 
ternal stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. A 
rose will not flower in the dark, and a fern will not 
flower anywhere. 

What do I think is <the true sunshine that opens 
the poet's corolla? — I don't like to say. They spoil 
a good many, I am afraid ; or at least they shine on 
a good many that never come to anything. 

Who are they ? — said the schoolmistress. 

Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and 
their praise is his best reward. 

The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked 
pleased. — Did I really think so? — I do think so ; I 
never feel safe until I have pleased them ; I don't 
think they are the first to see one's defects, but they 
are the first to catch the color and fragrance of a 
true poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it 
is a bow-string, — to a woman and it is a harp-string. 
She is vibratile and resonant all over, so she stirs 
with slighter musical tremblings of the air about her. 

Ah, me ! — said my friend, the Poet, to me, the 

other day, — what color would it not have given to 
my thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to 
n*y words, had I been fed on women's praises I I 
should have grown like Marv ell's fawn, — 

" lollies without ; roses within ! " 



212 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

But then, — he added, — we all think, if so and so, we 
should have been this or that, as you were saying, 
the other day, in those rhymes of yours. 

— —I don't think there are many poets in the sense 
of creators ; but of those sensitive natures which 
reflect themselves naturally in soft and melodious 
words, pleading for sympathy with their joys and 
sorrows, every literature is full. Nature carves with 
her own hands the brain which holds the creative 
imagination, but she casts the over-sensitive creatures 
in scores from the same mould. 

, There are two kinds of poets, just as there are two 
kinds of blondes. [Movement of curiosity among 
our ladies at table. — Please to tell us about those 
blondes, said the schoolmistress.] Why, there are 
blondes who are such simply by deficiency of color- 
ing matter, — negative or washed blondes, arrested by 
Nature on the way to become albinesses. There are 
others that are shot through with golden light, with 
tawny or fulvous tinges in various degree, — positive or 
stained blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as 
unlike in their mode of being to the others as an 
orange is unlike a snowball. The albino-style carries 
witn it a wide pupil and a sensitive retina. The 
other, or the leonine blonde, has an opaline fire m 
her clear eye, which the brunette can hardly match 
with hei quick glittering glances. 

Just so we have the great sun-kindled, constructive 
imaginations, and a far more numerous class of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 21* 

poets who have a certain kind of moonlight-geniu? 
given them to compensate for their imperfection of 
nature. Their want of mental coloring-matter makes 
them sensitive to those impressions which stronger 
minds neglect or never feel at all. Many of then 
die young, and all of them are tinged with melan 
choly. There is no more beautiful illustration of the 
principle of compensation which marks the Divine 
benevolence than the fact that some of the holiest 
lives and some of the sweetest songfs are the growth 
of the infirmity which unfits its subject for the 
rougher duties of life. When one reads the life of 
Cowper, or of Keats, or of Lucretia and Margaret 
Davidson, — of so many gentle, sweet natures, born 
to weakness, and mostly dying before their time, — 
one cannot help thinking that the human race dies 
out singing, like the swan in the old story. The 
French poet, Gilbert, who died at the Hutel Dieu, at 
the age of twenty-nine, — (killed by a key in his 
throat, which he had swallowed when delirious in 
consequence of a fall,) — this poor fellow was a very 
good example of the poet by excess of sensibility. I 
found, the other day, that some of my literary friends 
had never heard of him, though I suppose few edu- 
cated Frenchmen do not know the lines which he 
wrote, a week before his death, upon a mean bed in 
the great hospital of Paris. 

"Au banquet de la vie, iufortun6 convive, 
J'dpparus un jour, et je meurs ; 



214 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, oik lentement j'arrive, 
Nul ne vicndra verser des pleurs." 

At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest, 

One day I pass, then disappear ; 
I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest 

No friend shall come to shed a tear. 

You remember the same thing in other words some 
where in Kirke White's poems. It is the burden of 
the plaintive songs of all these sweet albino-poets. 
" I shall die and be forgotten, and the world will go 
on just as if I had never been ; — and yet how I have 
loved I how I have longed I how I have aspired I " 
And so singing, their eyes grow brighter and brighter, 
and their features thinner and thinner, until at last 
the veil of flesh is threadbare, and, still singing, they 
drop it and pass onward. 

Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The 

Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes 
the case, and gives the key into the hand of the 
Ansrel of the Resurrection. 

Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our 
will cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves ; 
sleep cannot still them ; madness only makes them 
go faster ; death alone can break into the case, and, 
seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call 
the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible 
escapement we have carried so long beneath our 
wrinkled foreheads. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 215 

If we could only get at them, as we lie on our 
pillows and count the dead beats of thought after 
thought and image after image jarring through the 
overtired organ I Will nobody block those wheels, 
uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds those 
weights, blow up the infernal machine with gun- 
powder? What a passion comes over us sometimes 
for silence and rest I — that this dreadful mechanism, 
unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered 
with spectral figures of life and death, could have 
bnt one brief holiday ! Who can wonder that men 
swing themselves otV from beams in hempen lassos? 
— that they jump olf from parapets into the swift 
and gurgling waters beneath? — that they take coun- 
sel of the grim friend who has hut to utter his one 
peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is 
shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble 
floor? Under that building which we pass every 
day there are strong dung(n)ns, where neither hook, 
nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which 
a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by an} 
chance be seen. There is nothing for it, when the 
brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but 
to spring against the stone wall and silence them 
with one crash. Ah, they remembered that, — the 
kind city fathers, — and the walls are nicely padded, 
so that one can take such exercise as he likes with- 
out damaging himself on the very plain and service- 
able upholstery. If anybody would only contrive 



216 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

some kind of a lever that one could thrust in among 
the works of this horrid automaton and check them, 
or alter their rate of going, what would the world 
give for the discovery ? 

From half a dime to a dime, according to the 

style of the place and the quality of the liquor, — 
said the young fellow whom they call John. 

You speak trivially, but not unwisely, — I said. 
Unless the will maintain a certain control over these 
movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some 
extent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the 
machine by some indirect system of leverage or 
other. They clap on the brakes by means of opium ; 
they change the maddening monotony of the rhythm 
by means of fermented liquors. It is because the 
brain is locked up and we cannot touch its move- 
ment directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in 
through any crevice, by which they may reach the 
interior, and so alter its rate of going for a while, 
and at last spoil the machine. 

Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the 
mind which work independently of the will, — poets 
and artists, for instance, who follow their imagination 
in their creative moments, instead of keeping it in 
hand as your logicians and practical men do with 
their reasoning faculty, — such men are too apt to call 
\n the mechanical appliances to help them govern 
their intellects. 

He means they get drunk, — said the young 

fellow already alluded to by name. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 217 

Do you think men of true genius are apt to in- 
dulge in the use of inebriating fluids ? — said the 
divinity-student. 

If you think you are strong enough to bear what 
I am going to say, — I replied, — I will talk to you 
about this. But mind, now, these are the things that 
kjome foolish people call dangerous subjects, — as if 
these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the ^ 
Guinea-worm burrows into the naked feet of Wes?t- 
Indian slaves, would be more mischievous when seen 
than out of sight. Now the true way to deal with 
those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long, 
some of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to 
get a piece of silk round their hcads^ and pull them 
out very cautiously. If you only break them off, 
they grow w^otse than ever, and sometimes kill the 
person who has the misfortune to harbor one of 
them. Whence it is plain that the first thing to do 
is to find out where the head lies. 

Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this 
vice of intemperance. What is the head of it, and 
where does it lie ? For you may depend upon it, 
there is not one of these vices that has not a head 
of its own, — an intelligence, — a meaning, — a certain 
virtue, I w^as going to say, — but that might, perhaps, 
sound paradoxical. I have heard an immense num- 
ber of moral physicians lay down the treatment of 
moral Guinea-worms, and the vast majority of them 
would always insist that the creature had no head at 

10 



218 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE. 

all, but was all body and tail. So I have found a 
very common result of their method to be that the 
string slipped, or that a piece only of the creature 
was broken off, and the worm soon grew again, as 
bad as ever. The truth is, if the Devil could only 
appear in church by attorney, and make the best 
statement that the facts would bear him out in doing 
on behalf of his special virtues, (what we commonly 
call vices,) the influence of good teachers would be 
much greater than it is. For the arguments by 
which the Devil prevails are precisely the ones that 
the Devil-queller most rarely answers. The way to 
argue down a vice is not to tell lies about it, — to say 
that it has no attractions, when everybody knows 
that it has, — bat rather to let it make out its case 
just as it certainly will in the moment of temptation, 
and then meet it v^dth the weapons furnished by the 
Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit the toad on his 
spear, you remember, but touched him with it, and 
the blasted angel took the sad glories of his true 
shape. If he had shown fight then, the fair spirits 
would have known how to deal with him. 

That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is 
not perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxicated with 
music, with poetry, with religious excitement, — 
oftenest with love. Ninon de I'Enclos said she was 
so easily excited that her soup intoxicated her, and 
convalescents have been made tipsy by a beef-steak. 

There are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 219 

which, in themselves, and without regard to their 
consequences, might be considered as positive im- 
provements of the persons affected. When the slug 
gish intellect is roused, the slow speech quickened, 
the cold nature warmed, the latent sympathy devel- 
oped, the flagging spirit kindled, — before the trains 
of thought become confused, or the will perverted, or 
the muscles relaxed, — just at the moment when the 
whole human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown 
rose, and rs ripe for the subscription-paper or the 
contribution-box, — it would be hard to say that a 
man was, at that very time, worse, or less to be 
loved, than when driving a hard bargain with all his 
meaner wits about him. The difficulty is, that the 
alcoholic vu'tues don't wash ; but until the water 
takes their colors out, the tints are very much like 
those of the true celestial stuff. 

[Here I was interrupted by a question which I am 
very unwilling to report, but have confidence enough 
in those friends who examine these records to com- 
mit to their candor. 

A person at table asked me whether I " went in 
for rum as a steady drink?" — His manner made the 
question highly offensive, but I restrained myself, 
and answered thus : — ] 

Rum I take to be the name which unwashed 
moralists apply alike to the product distilled from 
molasses and the noblest juices of the vineyard. 
Burgundy "in all its sunset glow" is rum. Cham» 



22C THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKEAST-TABLE. 

pagne, " the foaming wine of Eastern France," ia 
rum. Hock, which our friend, the Poet, speaks of as 

J " The Rhine's breastniilk, gushing cold and bright, 

Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light," 

is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as 

an insult to the first miracle wrought by the Founder 

of our religion I I address myself to the company.— 

J believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence, 

as a rule for healthy people. I trust that I practice 

both. But let me tell you, there are companies of 

men of genius into which I sometimes go, where 

the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much 

more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit 

to take wine, it would be to keep me sober. 

Among the gentlemen. that I have known, few, if 
any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken 
acquaintances were generally ruined before they be- 
came drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a 
vice, no doubt, — sometimes a misfortune, — as when 
an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to 
indulge in it, — but oftenest of all a punishment 

Empty heads, — heads without ideas in wholesome 
variety and sufficient number to furnish food for the 
mental clockwork, — ill-regulated heads, where the 
faculties are not under the control of the will, — these 
are the ones that hold the brains which their owners 
are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appli- 
ances we have been talking about. Now, when a 
gentleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 221 

great extent, his own fault ; and so *t is simple retri- 
bution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aim- 
lessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on liim like a 
vampyre, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the 
while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler 
dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to 
apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no 
chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and 
to be taught the lesson of self-government. I trust 
the tariff of Heaven has an ad valorem scale for 
them. — and all of us. 

But to come back to poets and artists; — if they 
really are more prone to the abuse of stimulants, — 
and I fear that this is true, — the reason of it is only 
too clear. A man abandons himself to a fine frenzy, 
and the power which flows through him, as I once 
explained to you, makes him the medium of a great 
-poem or a great picture. The creative action is not 
voluntary at all, but automatic ; we can only put the 
mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, 
that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus 
the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie^ 
or dreaming. If mind and body were both healthy 
and had food enough and fair play, I doubt whether 
any men would be more temperate than the imagin- 
ative classes. But body and mind often flag, — per- 
haps they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with 
iread or ideas, overworked, or abused in some way 
The automatic action, by which genius wrought 'ts 



222 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

wonders, fails. There is only one thing which can 
rouse the machine ; not will, — that cannot reach it ; 
nothing but a ruinous agent, which hurries the 
wheels awhile and soon eats out the heart of the 
mechanism. The dreaming faculties are always the 
dangerous ones, because their mode of action can be 
imitated by artificial excitement ; the reasoning ones 
are safe, because they imply continued voluntary 
effort. 

I think you will find it true, that, before any vice 
can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral nature 
must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather 
on sickly trees, not thriving ones ; and the odious 
parasites which fasten on the human frame choose 
that which is already enfeebled. ]\Ir. Walker, the 
hygeian humorist, declared that he had such a 
healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to 
stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity 
to wash a face which was of necessity always clean. 
I don't know how much fancy there was in this; 
but there is no fancy in saying that the lassitude' of 
tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative 
natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity 
of minds untrained to labor and discipline, fit the 
goul and body for the germination of the seeds of 
intemperance. 

Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness 
bnds a ship adrift, — no steady wind in its sails, no 
thoughtful pilot directing its course, — he steps on 



TJE AUTOCKAT OP^ THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 223 

board, takes the helm, and steers straight for the 
maelotrom. 



1 wonder if you know the terrible smile ? 



[The young fellow whom they call John winked 
very hard, and made a jocular remark, the sense of 
which seemed to depend on some double meaning 
of the word smile. Tlie company was curious tx) 
know what I meant.] 

There are persons — I said — who no sooner come 
within sight of you than they begin to smile, with 
an uncertain movement of the mouth, which con- 
veys the idea that they are thinking about them- 
selves, and thinking, too, that you are thinking they 
are thinking about themselves, — and so look at you 
with a wretched mixture of self-consciousness, awk- 
wardness, and attempts to carry off both, which are 
betrayed by the cowardly behaviour of the eye and 
the tell-tale weakness of the lips that characterize 
these unfortunate beings. 

Why do you call them unfortunate, Sir?— 



asked the divinity-student. 

Because it is evident that the consciousness of 
some imbecility or other is at the bottom of this ex- 
traordinary expression. I don't think, however, that 
these persons are commonly fools. I have known a 
number, and all of them were intelligent. I think 
nothing conveys the idea of underbreeding more 
than this self-betraying smile. Yet I think this pe* 



224 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

culiar habit as well as that of 7neaningless blushing 
may be fallen into by very good people who me( 
often, or sit opposite each other at table. A true 
gentleman's face is infinitely removed from all such 
paltriness, — calm-eyed, firm-mouthed. I think Ti- 
tian understood the look of a gentleman as well as 
anybody that ever lived. The portrait of a young 
man holding a glove in his hand, in the Gallery of 
the Louvre, if any of you have seen that collection, 
will remind you of what I mean. 

Do I think these people know the peculiar 

look they have ? — I cannot say ; I hope not ; I am 
afraid they would never forgive me, if they did. 
The worst of it is, the trick is catching ; when one 
meets one of these fellows, he feels a tendency to 
the same manifestation. The Professor tells me 
there is a muscular slip, a dependence of the platysma 
myoides^ which is called the risorius Sunlorini,^ 

Say that once more, — exclaimed the young 

fellow mentioned above. 

The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip 
called Santorini's laughing muscle. I would have 
it cut out of my face, if I were born with one of 
those constitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am 
uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-looking 
people I told you of the other day, and of these 
smiling folks. It may be that they are born with 
these looks, as other people are with more generally 
recognized deformities. Both are bad enough, but I 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRhAKFAST-TABLE. 22c 

had rather meet three of the scowlers than one of 
the smilers. 

There is another unfortunate way of looking, 

which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do not like 
to find fault with. There are some very pretty, but, 
unhappily, very ill-bred women, who don't under- 
stand the law of the road with regard to handsome 
faces. Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree 
in conceding to all males the right of at least two 
distinct looks at every comely female countenance, 
without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the 
sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to 
define the person of the individual one meets so as 
to avoid it in oassing. Any unusual attraction de- 
tected in a first glance is a suflicicnt apology for a 
second, — not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but 
an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a 
stranger may inoffensively yield to a passing image. 
It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vul- 
gar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of 
this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she leaves 
her virtuous-indignation countenance at home ; she 
knows well enough that the street is a picture- 
gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets 
are meant to be seen, and everybody has a right to 
see them. 

When we observe how the same features and 

style of person and character descend from gener- 
ation to generatiouj we can believe that some in- 

10* 



226 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

herited weakness may account for these peculiaritiea 
Little snapping-turtles snap — so the great naturalist 
tells us — before they are out of the egg-shell. I am 
satisfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life, 
character is distinctly shown at the age of — 2 or 
— 3 months. 

My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs 

lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity, 
which I did not allow to interrupt the course of my 
observations.] He has been reading the great book 
where he found the fact about the little snapping- 
turtles mentioned above. Some of the things he 
has told me have suggested several odd analogies 
enough. 

There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in 
their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation's 
or century's civilization. These eggs are not ready 
to be laid in the form of books as yet; some of them 
are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. 
But as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, 
there they are ; and these are what must form the 
future. A man's general notions are not good for 
much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual 
ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as 
they exist in the minds of others. One must be in 
the habit of talking with such persons to get at these 
rudimentary germs of thought ; for their develop- 
ment is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded 
on new patterns, which must be long and closely 



I HE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 22 f 

studied. But these are the men to talk with. No 
fresh truth ever gets into a book. 

A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow, — said 

one of the company. 

I proceeded in spite of the interruption. — All 
uttered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is 
ot the nature of an excretion. Its materials have 
been taken in, and have acted upon the system, and 
been reacted on by it; it has circulated and done its 
office in one mind before it is given out for the 
benefit of others. It may be milk or venom to other 
minds ; but, in either case, it is something which the 
producer has had the use of and can part with. A 
man instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in 
conversation or in print so soon as it is matured ; 
but it is hard to get at it as it lies imbedded, a 
mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in his in- 
tellect. 

Where are the brains that are fullest of these 

ovarian eggs of thought ? — I decline mentioning 
individuals. The producers of thought, who are 
few, the "jobbers" of thought, who are many, and 
the retailers of thought, who are numberless, are so 
mixed up in the popular apprehension, that it would 
be hopeless to try to separate them before opinion 
has had time to settle. Follow the course of opinion 
on the great subjects of human interest for a few 
generations or centuries, get its parallax, map out a 
«mall arc of its movementj see where it tends, and 



228 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

then see who is in advance of it or even with it ; the 
world calls him hard names, probably; but if you 
would find the ova of the future, you must look into 
the folds of his cerebral convolutions. 

[The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at 
this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where 
he was to come out, if he computed his arc too 
nicely. I think it possible it might cut off a few 
corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr- 
burning and witch-hanging ; — but time will show, 
— time will show, as the old gentleman opposite 
Bays.] 

Oh, — here is that copy of verses I told you 

about 

SPRING HAS COME. 

Intra Muros. 

The sunbeams, lost for half a year, 
Slant through my pane their morning rays 

For dry Northwesters cold and clear, 
The East blows in its thin blue haze. 

And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, 
Then close against the sheltering wall 

The tulip's horn of dusky green, 
The peony's dark unfolding ball. 

The golden-chaliced crocus burns ; 

The long narcissus-blades appear ; 
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, 

And lights her blue-flamed chandelier. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 22i 

The willow's whistling lashes, wrung 

By the wild winds of gusty March, 
"With sallow leaflets lightly strung, 

Are swaying by the tufted larch. 

The elms have robed their slender spray 
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; 

Wide o'er the clasping arch of day 
Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. 

[See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, 

That flames in glory for an hour, — 
Behold it withering, — then look up, — 

How meek the forest-monarch's flower!^ 

When wake the violets, Winter dies ; 

When sprout the elm-buds. Spring is near ; 
When lilacs blossom. Summer cries, 

" Bud, little roses ! Spring is here ! **] 

The windows blush with fresh bouquets, 

Cut with the May-dew on their hps ; 
The radish all its bloom displays, 

Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. 

Nor less the flood of light that showers 

On beauty's changed corolla-shades, — 
The walks are gay as bridal bowers 

With rows of many-petalled maids. 

The scarlet shell-fish click and clash 

In the blue barrow where they slide ; 
The horseman, proud of streak and splash. 

Creeps homeward from his morning rida. 



230 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Here comes the dealer*s awkward string, 
With neck in rope and tail in knot, — 

Rough colts, with careless country-swing, 
In lazy Avalk or slouching trot. 

Wild filly from the mountain-side, 



Doomed to the close and chafing thills, 
Lend me thy long, untiring stride 
To seek with thee thy western hills I 

I hear the whispering voice of Spring, 
The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry, 

Like some poor bird with prisoned wing 
That sits and sings, but longs to fly. 

Oh for one spot of living green, — 

One little spot where leaves can grow,- 

To love unblanied, to walk unseen. 
To dream above, to sleep below I 



IX. 

[Aqui esla encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro 
Garcias. 

If I should ever make a little book out of these 
papers, which I hope you are not getting tired of, I 
suppose I ought to save the above sentence for a 
motto on the title-page. But I want it now, and 
must use it- I need not say to you that the words 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 2S1 

are Spanish, nor that they are to be found in the 
short Introduction to " Gil Bias," nor that they mean, 
*^ Here lies buried the soul of the licentiate Pedro 
Garcias." 

I warned all young people off the premises when 
I began my notes referring to old age. I must be 
equally fair with old people now. They are earnestly 
requested to leave this paper to young persons from 
the age of twelve to that of four-score years and ten, 
at which latter period of life I am sure that I shall 
have at least one youthful reader. You know well 
enough what I mean by youth and age ; — something 
in the soul, which has no more to do with the color 
of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do 
with the grass a thousand feet above it. 

I am growing bolder as I write. I think it requires 
not only youth, but genius, to read this paper. I 
don't mean to imply that it required any whatsoever 
to talk what I have here written down. It did de- 
mand a certain amount of memory, and such com- 
mand of the English tongue as is given by a common 
school education. So much I do claim. But here I 
have related, at length, a string of trivialities. You 
must have the imagination of a poet to transfigure 
them. These little colored patches are stains upon 
the windows of a human soul ; stand on the outside, 
they are but dull and meaningless spots of color f 
seen from within, they are glorified shapes with em 
purpled wings and sunbright aureoles. 



232 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

My hand trembles when I offer you this. Many 
times I have come bearing flowers such as ray gar- 
den grew; but now I offer you this poor, brown, 
homely growth, you may cast it away as worthless. 
And yet — and yet — it is something better than 
flowers ; it is a seed-capsule. Many a gardener will 
cut you a bouquet of his choicest blossoms for small 
fee, but he does not love to let the seeds of his rarest 
varieties go out of his own hands. 

It is by little things that we know ourselves ; a soul 
would very probably mistake itself for another, when 
once disembodied, were it not for individual experi- 
ences which differ from those of others only in de- 
tails seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty 
thousands of times, and felt, with Pindar, that water 
was the best of things. I alone, as I think, of all 
mankind, remember one particular pailful of water, 
flavored with the white-pine of which the pail was 
made, and the brown mug out of which one Edmund, 
a red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred to have 
bitten a fragment in his haste to drink; it being then 
high summer, and little full-blooded boys feeling very 
warm and porous in the low-" studded " school-room 
where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over 
young children, many of whom are old ghosts now, 
and have known Abraham for twenty or thirty years 
of our mortal time. 

Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in aL 
ages ; but that white-pine pail, and that brown mug 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 235 

Delong to me in particular ; and just so of my special 
relationships with other things and wirh my race. 
9ne could never remember himself in eternity by the 
mere fact of having loved or hated any more than by 
that of having thirsted ; love and hate have no more 
individuality in them than single waves in the ocean ; 
— but the accidents or trivial marks which distin- 
guished those whom we loved or hated make their 
memory our own forever, and with it that of our own 
personality also. 

Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, or 
thereabouts, pause at the threshold of this particular 
record, and ask yourself seriously whether you are 
fit to read such revelations as are to follow. For 
observe, you have here no splendid array of petals 
such as poets offer you, — nothing but a dry shell, 
containing, if you will get out what is in it, a few 
small seeds of poems. You may laugh at them, if 
you like. I shall never tell you what I think of you 
for so doing. But if you can read into the heart of 
these things, in the light of other memories as slight, 
yet as dear to your soul, then you are neither more 
nor less than a Poet, and can afford to write no more 
verses during the rest of your natural life, — which 
abstinence I take to be one of the surest marks of 
your meriting the divine name I have just bestowed 
upon you. 

May I beg of you who have begun this paper, 
nobly trusting to your own imagination and sensi- 



234 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-1 AB-LE. 

bilities to give it the significance which it does not lay 
claim to without your kind assistance, — may I beg 
of you, I say, to pay particular attention to the 
brackets which, enclose certain paragraphs ? I want 
my " ^sides," you see, to whisper loud to you who 
read my notes, and sometimes I talk a page or two 
to you without pretending that I said a word of it 
to our boarders. You will find a very long " aside " 
to you almost as soon as you begin to read. And 
so, dear young friend, fall to" at once, taking such 
things as I have provided for you ; and if you turn 
them, by the aid of your powerful imagination, into 
a fair banquet, why, then, peace be with you, and a 
summer by the still waters of some quiet river, or by 
some yellow beach, where, as my friend the Professor, 
says, you can sit with Nature's wrist in your hand 
and count her ocean-pulses.] 

I should like to make a few intimate revelations 
relating especially to my early life, if 1 thought you 
would like to hear them. 

[The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, and 
sat with her face directed partly towards me. — Half- 
mourning now ; — purple ribbon. That breastpin she 
wears has ^ray hair in it ; her mother's, no doubt ; — 
I remember our landlady's daughter telling me, soon 
after the schoolmistress came to board with us, that 
she had lately " buried a payrent." That's what 
made her look so pale,- -kept the poor dying thing 
aJJve with her own blood. Ah 1 long ilhiess is the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 23A 

• 

real vampyrism ; think of living a year'or two after 
one is dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a fraU 
young creature at one's bedside! Well, souls grow 
white, as well as cheeks, in these holy duties , one 
that goes in a nurse may come out an angel. — God 
bless all good w^omen I — to their soft hands and pity- 
ing hearts we must all come at last ! The school- 
mistress has a better color than when she came. 

Too late I " It might have been." Amen ! 

—How many thoughts go to a dozen heart- 



beats, sometimes! There was no long pause aftet 
my remark addressed to the company, but in that 
time I had the train of ideas and feelings I have 
just given flash through my consciousness sudden 
and sharp as the crooked red streak that springs out 
of its black sheath like the creese of a Malay in his 
death-race, and stabs the earth right and left in its 
blind rage. 

I don't deny that there was a pang in it, — yes, a 
stab; but there was a prayer, too, — the "Amen" be- 
longed to that. — Also, a vision of a four-story brick 
house, nicely furnished, — I actually saw many specific 
articles, — curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could 
draw the patterns of them at this moment, — a brick 
bouse, I say, looking out on the water, with a fair 
parlor, and books and busts and pots of flowers and 
bird-cages, all complete ; and at the window, looking 
on the water, two of us. — " Male and female created 
He tliem." — These two were standing at the window, 



236 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

when a smaller shape that was playing near th 3m 

looked up at me with such a look that I 

poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and 
then continued.] 

I said I should like to tell you some things, such 
as people commonly never tell, about my early recol- 
lections. Should you like to hear them ? 

Should we like to hear them ? — said the school- 
mistress ; — no, but we should love to. 

[The voice was a sweet one,, naturally, and had 
something very pleasant in its tone, just then. — The 
four-story brick house, which had gone out like a 
transparency when the light behind it is quenched, 
glimmered again for a moment ; parlor, books, busts, 
flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete, — and the figures 
as before.] 

We are waiting with eagerness. Sir, — said the 
divinity-student. 

[The transparency went out as if a flash of black 
lightning had struck it.] 

If you want to hear my confessions, the next 
thing — I said — is to know whether I can trust you 
with them. It is only fair to say that there are a 
great many people in the world that laugh at such 
things. / think they are fools, but perhaps you 
don't all agree with me. 

Here are children of tender age talked to as if 
they were capable of understanding Calvin's " Insti- 
tutes," and nobody has honesty or sense enough to 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 237 

tell the plain truth about the •little wretches: that 
they are as superstitious as naked savages, and such 
miserable spiritual cowards— that is, if they have any 
imagination— that they will believe anything which 
is taught them, and a great deal more which they 
teach themselves. 

I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty 
times, among books and those who knew what was 
in books. I was carefully instructed in things tem- 
poral and spiritual. But up to a considerable matu- 
rity of childhood I believed Raphael and Michael 
Aiio-elo to have been superhuman beings. The 
central doctrine of the prevalent religious faith ol 
Christendom was utterly confused and neutralized in 
my mind for years by one of those too common sto- 
ries of actual life, which I overheard repeated in a 
whisper.— Why did I not ask? you will say.— You 
doii't remember the rosy pudency of sensitive chil- 
dren. The first instinctive movement of the little 
creatures is to make a cache, and bury in it beliefs, 
doubts, dreams, hopes, and terrors. I am uncovering 
one of these caches. Do you think I was neces- 
sarily a greater fool and coward than another ? 

I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell. 
The masts looked frightfully tall,— but they were not 
so tall as the steeple of our old yellow nieeting-house. 
A.t any rate I used to hide my eyes from the sloops 
and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of 
whe bridge, and I confess that traces of this undefined 



'5^5 



238 THE AUTOCRAT OV THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

terror lasted very lon^ — One other source of alarm 
had a still more fearful significance. There was a 
great wooden hand, — a glove-maker's sign, which 
used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from 
a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside 
of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand ! Always hang- 
ing there ready to catch up a little boy, who would 
come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed, — 
whose porringer would be laid away empty thence- 
forth, and his half-worn shoes wait until his small 
brother grew to fit them. 

As for all manner of superstitious observances, I 
used once to think I must have been peculiar in 
having such a list of them, but I now believe that 
naif the children of the same age go through the 
same experiences. No Roman soothsayer ever had 
such a catalogue of omens as I found in the Sibyl- 
line leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing 
a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty issue to 
hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned in 
one or more biographies, I well remember. Stepping 
on or over certain particular things or spots — Dr 
Johnson's especial weakness — I got the habit of at 
a very early age. — I won't swear that I have not 
some tendency to these not wise practices even at 
this present date. [How many of you that read 
these notes can say the same thing!] 

With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which 
I loved so well I would not outgrow them, even 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIK BREAKFAST- TAriLE. 231 

when it required a voluntary efTort to put a moment- 
ary trust in them. Here is one whicli I cannot help 
telling you. 

The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is 
easily heard at the place where I was born and lived. 
*^ There is a ship of war come in," they used to say, 
when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that 
such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite 
years of absence, — suddenly as falling stones ; and 
that the great guns roared in their astonishment and 
delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the 
bay with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of-war the 
Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing 
the Reindeer and the Avon, had disaj)peared from 
the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost. 
But there was no proof of it, and, of course, for a 
time, hopes were entertained that she might be 
heard from. Long after the last real chance had 
utterly vanished, I pleased myself with the -fond illu- 
sion that somewhere on tlie waste of waters she was 
still floating, and there were years during which I 
never heard the sound of the great guns boommg 
inland from the Navy-yard without saying to myself, 
** The Wasp has come I " and almost thinking I 
could see her, as she rolled in, crumpling the water 
before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered 
spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts 
and tears of thousands. This was one of those 
dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me make 



2^0 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to 
have outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on 
towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon has 
struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a 
thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight, 
and the long-unspoken words have articulated them- 
selves in the mind's dumb whisper, Tlie Wasp has 



come ! 



Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. 

I suppose all of you have had the pocket-book fever 
when you were little ? — What do I mean ? Why, 
ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that 
bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in 
them. — So, too, you must all remember some splen- 
did unfulfilled promise of somebody or other, which 
fed you with hopes perhaps for years, and which left 
a blank in your life which nothing has ever filled up. 
— O. T. quitted our household carrying with him the 
passionate regrets of the more youthful members. 
He was an ingenious youngster ; wrote wonderful 
copies, and carved the two initials given above with 
great skill on all available surfaces. I thought, by 
the way, they were all gone ; but the other day I 
found them on a certain door which I will show you 
some time. How it surprised me to find them so 
near the ground I I had thought the boy of no 
trivial dimensions. Well, O. T., when he went, 
made a solemn promise to two of us. I was to 
have a ship, and the other a mar^m-house (last syl- 



THE AUTOCRAT UF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 241 

^able pronounced as in the word tin). Neither ever 
came ; but, oh, how many and many a time I have 
stolen to the corner, — the cars pass close by it at this 
time, — and looked up that long avenue, thinking 
that he must be coming now, almost sure, as I 
turned to look northward, that there he would be, 
trudging toward me, the ship in one hand and the 
mar/m-house in the other I 

[You must not suppose that all I am going to say, 
as well as all I have said, was told to tlie whole 
company. The young fellow whom they call John 
was in the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a 
cheroot, the fumes of which came in, not ungrateful, 
through the open window. The divinity-student 
disappeared in the midst of our talk. The poor 
relation in black bombazine, who looked and moved 
as if all her articulations were elbow-joints, had 
gone off to her chamber, after waiting with a look 
of soul-subduing decorum at the foot of the stairs 
until one of the male sort had passed her and 
ascended into the upper regions. This is a famous 
point of etiquette in our boarding-house ; in fact, 
between ourselves, they make such an awful fuss 
about it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather have 
them simple enough not to think of such matters at 
all. Our landlady's daughter said, the other even- 
ing, that she was going to "retire " ; whereupon the 
young fellow called John took up a lamp and in* 

sisted on lighting her to the foot of the staurcase 

11 



242 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 

Nothing would induce her to pass by him, until the 
schoolmistress, saying in good plain English that it 
was her bed-time, walked straight by them both, not 
seeming to trouble herself about either of them. 

I have been led away from what I meant the por- 
tion included in these brackets to inform my readers 
about. I say, then, most of the boarders had left the 
table about the time when I began telling some of 
these secrets of mine, — all of them, in fact, but the 
old gentleman opposite and the schoolmistress. I 
understand why a young woman should like to hear 
these simple but genuine experiences of early life, 
which are, as I have said, the little brown seeds of 
what may yet grow to be poems with leaves of 
azure and gold ; but when the old gentleman pushed 
up his chair nearer to me, and slanted round his best 
ear, and once, when I was speaking of some trifling, 
tender reminiscence, drew a long breath, with such a 
tremor in it that a little more and it would have 
been a sob, why, then I felt there must be .something 
of nature in them which redeemed their seeming in- 
significance. Tell me, man or woman with whom I 
am whispering, have you not a small store of recol- 
lections, such as these I am uncovering, buried 
beneath the dead leaves of many summers, perhaps 
under the unmelting snows of fast-returning winters, 
— a few such recollections, which, if you should 
write them all out, would be swept into some care- 
ess editor's drawer, and might cost a scanty half- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABli;. 243 

hour's lazy reading to his subscribers, — and yet, if 
Death should cheat you of them, you would not 
know yourself in eternity ?] 

1 made three acquaintances at a very early 

period of life, my introduction to whom was never 
forgotten. The first unequivocal act of wrong that 
has left its trace in my memory was this: refus- 
ing a small favor asked of me, — nothing more than 
telling what had happened at school one morn- 
ing. No matter who asked it; but there were cir- 
cumstances which saddened and awed me. I had 
no heart to speak ; — I faltered some miserable, per- 
haps petulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle 
of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not 
tell. Then and there, to the best of my knowledge, 
I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned 
my back on Duty. Time has led me to look upon 
my offence more leniently ; I do not believe it or 
any other childish WTong is infinite, as some have 
pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh if I had but 
won that battle ! 

The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was 
that had silenced me, came near me, — but never, so 
as to be distinctly seen and remembered, during my 
tender years. There flits dimly before me the image 
of a little girl, whose name even I have forgotten, a 
schoolmate, whom we missed one day, and were 
told that she had died. But what death was 1 
never had any very distinct idea, until one day I 



244 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

climbed the low stone wall of the old burial-grouna 
and mingled with a group that were looking into a 
very deep, long, narrow hole, dug down through the 
green sod, down through the brown loam, down 
through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom 
was an oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face 
of a young man seen through an opening at one end 
of it. When the lid was closed, and the gravel and 
stones rattled down pell-mell, and the woman in 
black, who was crying and wringing her hands, 
went off with the other mourners, and left him, then 
I felt that I had seen Death, and should never forget 
him. 

One other acquaintance I made at an earlier pe- 
riod of life than the habit of romancers authorizes. — 
Love, of course. — She was a famous beauty after- 
wards. — I am satisfied that many children rehearse 
their parts in the drama of life before they have shed 
all their milk-teeth. — I think I won't tell the story 
of the golden blonde. — I suppose everybody has had 
his childish fancies ; but sometimes they are pas 
sionate impulses, which anticipate all the tremuloua 
emotions belonging to a later period. Most children 
remember seeing and adoring an angel before they 
were a dozen years old. 

[The old gentleman had left his chair opposite and 
taken a seat by the schoolmistress and myself, a 
little way from the table. — It's true, it's true, — saia 
the old gentleman. — He took hold of a steel watch* 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 243 

chain, which carried a large, square gold key at one 
end and was supposed to have some kind of time- 
keeper at the other. With some trouble he dragged 
up an ancient-looking, thick, silver, bull's-eye watch. 
He looked at it for a moment, — hesitated, — touched 
the inner corner of his right eye with the pulp of his 
middle finger, — looked at the face of the watch, — 
said it was getting into the forenoon, — then opened 
the watch and handed me the loose outside case 
without a word. — The watch-paper had been pink 
once, and had a faint tinge still, as if all its tender 
life had not yet quite faded out. Two little birds, a 
flower, and, in small school-girl letters, a date, — 17 . . 
— no matter. — Before I was thirteen years old, — said 

the old gentleman. 1 don't know what was in 

that young schoolmistress's head, nor why she should 
have done it ; but she took out the watch-paper and 
put it softly to her lips, as if she were kissing tire 
poor thing that made it so long ago. The old gen- 
tleman took the watch-paper carefully from her, 
replaced it, turned away and walked out, holding 
the watch in his hand. I saw him pass the window 
a moment after with that foolish white hat on his 
head ; he couldn't have been thinking what he was 
about when he put it on. So the schoolmistress 
and I were left alone. I drew my chair a shade 
nearer to her, and continued.] 

And since I am talking of early recollections, I 
don't know why I shouldn't mention some others 



246 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

that still cling to me, — not that you will attach any 
very particular meaning to these same images so 
full of significance to me, but that you will find 
something parallel to them in your own memory. 
You remember, perhaps, what I said one day about 
smells. There were certain sounds also which had a 
mysterious suggestiveness to me, — not so intense, 
perhaps, as that connected with the other sense, but 
yet peculiar, and never to be forgotten. 

The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, 
bringing their loads of oak and walnut from the 
country, as the slow-swinging oxen trailed them 
along over the complaining snow, in the cold, brown 
light of early morning. Lying in bed and listening 
to their dreary music had a pleasure in it akin to the 
Lucretian luxury, or that which Byron speaks of as 
to be enjoyed in looking on at a battle by one " who 
bath no friend, no brother there." 

There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and 
so connected with one of those simple and curious 
superstitions of childhood of which I have spoken, 
that I can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love 
for it. — Let me tell the superstitious fancy first 
The Puritan " Sabbath," as everybody knows, began 
at " sundown " on Saturday evening. To such 
observance of it I was born and bred. As the large, 
round disk of day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a 
somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It 
v-fas time for work to cease, and for playthings to be 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAIvFAST-TABLE. 247 

put away. The world of active life passed into the 
shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun 
should sink as:ain beneath the horizon. 

It was in this stillness of the world without and 
of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the 
evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly 
heard, — so that I well remember I used to think that 
the purring of these little creatures, which mingled 
with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring 
swamp, ivas peculiar to Saturday evening's. I don't 
know that anything could give a clearer idea of the 
quieting and subduing effect of the old habit of 
observance of what was considered holy time, than 
this strange, childish fancy. 

Yes, and there was still another sound which 
mingled its solemn cadences with the waking and 
sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was heard only 
^t times, — a deep, muffled roar, which rose and 
fell, not loud, but vast, — a whistling boy would have 
drowned it for his next neighbor, but it must have 
been heard over the space of a hundred square miles. 
I used to wonder what this might be. Could it be 
the roar of the thousand wheels and the ten thousand 
'botsteps jarring and trampling along the stones of 
the neighboring city ? That would be continuous ; 
Dut this, as I have said, rose and fell in regular 
rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose this 
to have been the true solutio i, that it was the sound 
rf the waves, after a high wind, breaking on the long 



248 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKS AST-TABLE. 

beaches many miles distant. I should really like to 
know whether any observing people living ten miles, 
more or less, inland from long beaches, — in such a 
town, for instance, as Cantabridge, in the eastern 
part of the Territory of the Massachusetts, — have 
ever observed any such sound, and whether it was 
rightly accounted for as above. 

Minoflins: with these inarticulate sounds in the 
low murmur of memory, are the echoes of certain 
voices I have heard at rare intervals. I grieve to 
say it, but our people, I think, have not generally 
agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with 
skins that shed water like the backs of ducks, with 
smooth surfaces neatly padded beneath, and velvet 
linings to their singing-pipes, are not so common 
among us as that other pattern of humanity with 
angular outlines and plane surfaces, arid integu- 
ments, hair like the fibrous covering of a cocoa-nut 
in gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices 
at once thin and strenuous, — acidulous enough to 
produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous 
enough to sing duets with the katydids. I think 
our conversational soprano, as sometimes overheard 
in the cars, arising from a group of young persons, 
who may have taken the train at one of our great 
industrial centres, for instance, — young persons of 
the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in 
full-dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and 
who, after free discussion, have fixed on two or more 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 219 

double seats, which having secured, they proceed to 
eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes, — I say, 
I think the conversational soprano, heard under these 
circumstances, would not be among the allurements 
the old Enemy would put in requisition, were he 
getting up a new temptation of St. Anthony. 

There are sweet voices among us, we all know, 
and voices not musical, it may be, to those who hear 
them for the first time, yet sweeter to us than any 
we shall hear until we listen to some warbling: anjrel 
in the overture to that eternity of bliss^ful harmonies 
we hope to enjoy. — But why should I tell lies ? If 
my friends love me, it is because I try to tell the 
truth. I never heard but two voices in my life that 
frightened me by their sweetness. 

Frightened you ? — said the schoolmistress. — 

Yes, frightened me. They made me feel as if there 
might be constituted a creature with such a chord in 
her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she 
but spoke, he would leave all and follow her, though 
it were into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance 
to keep our wits is, that there are so few natural 
chords between others' voices and this string in our 
souls, and that those which at first may have jarred 
a little by and by come into harmony with it. — But 
I tell you this is no fiction. You may call the story 
of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you 
Bay to Mario and the poor lady who followed him ? 

Whose were those two voices that bewitched 

11* 



250 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

me SO ? — They both belonged to German women 
One was a chambermaid, not otherwise fascinating 
The key of my room at a certain great hotel was 
missing, and this Teutonic maiden was summoned 
to give information respecting it. The simple soul 
was evidently not long from her mother-land, and 
spoke with sweet uncertainty of dialect. But to 
hear her wonder and lament and suggest, with soft, 
liquid inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as 
full of serious tenderness for the fate of the lost key 
as if it had been a child that had strayed from its 
mother, was so winning, that, had her features and 
figure been as delicious as her accents, — if she had 
'ooked like the marble Clytie, for instance, — why, all 
I can say is 

[The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, that 
I stopped short.] 

I was only going to say that I should have drowned 
myself. For Lake Erie was close by, and it is so 
much better to accept asphyxia, which takes only 
three minutes by the watch, than a mesalliance^ that 
lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes along 
down the line of descent, (breaking out in all man- 
ner of boorish manifestations of feature and man- 
ner, which, if men were only as short-lived as horses, 
could be readily traced back through the square- 
roots and the cube-roots of the family stem on which 
you have hung the armorial bearings of the De 
Champignons or the De la Morues, until one came 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 251 

to beings that ate with knive.i and said " Haow ? ") 
that no person of right feeling could have hesitated 
for a single moment. 

The second of the ravishing voices I have heard 
was, as I have said, that of another German woman. 
— I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying that 
such a voice could not have come from any Ameri- 
canized human being. 

What was there in it ? — said the school- 
mistress, — and, upon my word, her tones were so 
very musical, that I almost wished I had said three 
voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic 
remark above reported. — Oh, I said, it had so much 
woman in it, — muliebrity^ q.s well as feminciti/ ; — no 
self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces into 
every word and movement ; large, vigorous nature, 
running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Taci- 
tus, but subdued by the reverential training and 
tuned by the kindly culture of fifty generations. 
Sharp business habits, a lean soil, independence, en- 
terprise, and east winds, are not the best things for 
the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us, 
— I have known families famous for them, — but ask 
the first person you meet a question, and ten to one 
there is a hard, sharp, metallic, matter-of-busmess 
clink in the accents of the answer, that produces the 
effect of one of those bells which small trades-people 
connect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon 
your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, that yo>lr 



252 "^fi^ AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABLE. 

first impulse is to retire at once from the pre« 
cincts. 

Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child 

I saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two 
and three years old. Fell out of her chair and snap 
ped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. 
Rough students round her, some in white aprons, 
looking fearfully business-like; but the child placid, 
perfectly still. I spoke to her, and th6 blessed little 
creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly 
sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have 
heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this 
moment, while I am writing, so many, many years 
afterwards. — Oest tout comme un serin, said the 
French student at my side. 

These are the voices which struck the key-note of 
my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear 
in heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of 
the twelve gates of pearl. There must be other 
thinfjs besides aerolites that wander from their own 
spheres to ours ; and when we speak of celestial 
sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal 
truth than we dream. If mankind generally are the 
shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cata- 
clysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humani- 
ty to make one more trial to reach the shore, — as some 
grave theologians have maintained, — if, in plain Eng- 
lish, men are the ghosts of dead devils who have 
** died into life^'" (to borrow an expression froiK 



THE AITOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 253 

Keats,) and walk the earth in a suit of living raga 
which lasts thiee or four score summers, — why, there 
must have been a few good spirits sent to keep thera 
company, and these sweet voices I speak, of must 
belong to them. 

1 wish you could once hear my sister's voice, 

— said the schoolmistress. 

If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one, — 
said I. 

I never thought mine was an3rthing, — said the 
schoolmistress. 

How should you know ?-^said I. — People never 
hear their own voices, — any more than they see their 
own faces. There is not even a looking-glass for the 
voice. Of course, there is something audible to us 
when we 3peak ; but that something is not our own 
voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. I 
think, if an image spoke to us in our own tones, we 
ehould not know them in the least. — How pleasant it 
^rould be, if in another state of being we could have 
shapes like our former selves for playthings, — we 
standing outside or inside of them, as we liked, and 
they being to us just what we used to be to others! 

1 wonder if there will be nothing: like what 

we call " play," after our earthly toys are broken, — 
said the schoolmistress. 

Hush, — said I, — what will the divinity-student 
Bay? 

[I thought she was hit, that time j — but the shot 



254 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK 

must have gone over her, or on one side of her ; she 
did not flinch.] 

Oh, — said the schoolmistress, — he must look out 
for my sister's heresies ; I am afraid he will be too 
busy with them to take care of mine. 

Do you mean to say, — said I, — that it is your sis- 
ter whom that student 

[The young fellow commonly known as John, who 
had been sitting on the barrel, smoking, jumped off 
just then, kicked over the barrel, gave it a push with 
his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his saucy-looking 
face in at the window so as to cut my question off 
in the middle ; and the schoolmistress leaving the 
room a few minutes afterwards, I did not have a 
chance to finish it. 

The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, 
putting his heels on the top of another. 

Pooty girl, — said he. 

A fine young lady, — I replied. 

Keeps a fust-rate school, according to accounts, — 
said he, — teaches all sorts of things, — Latin and 
Italian and music. Folks rich once, — smashed up. 
She went right ahead as smart as if she'd been born 
to work. That's the kind o' girl I go for. I'd 
marry her, only two or three other girls would drown 
themselves, if I did. 

I think the above is the longest speech of this young 
fellow's which I have put on record. I do not like 
to change his peculiar expressions, for this is one of 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 255 

those cases in which the style is the man, as M. de 
BulTon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a 
good-heafted creature enough, only too fond of his 
jokes, — and if it were not for those heat-lightning 
winks on one side of his face, I should not mind his 
fun much.] 

[Some days after this, when the company were 
together again, I talked a little.] 

1 don't think I have a genuine hatred for any- 

Dody. I am well aware that I dilVer herein from the 
sturdy English moralist and the stout American tra- 
gedian. I don't deny that I hate the si^ht of certain 
people ; but the qualities which make me tend to 
hate the man himself are such as I am so much dls 
posed to pity, that, except under immediate aggrava- 
tion, I feel kindly enough to the worst of them. It 
is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so 
much worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple 
of club-feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to 
love the crippled souls, if I may use this expression, 
with a certain tenderness which we need not waste 
on noble natures. One who is born with such con- 
genital incapacity that nothing can make a gentle- 
man of him is entitled, not to our wrath, but to our 
profoundest sympathy. But as we cannot help hat- 
ing the sight of these people, just as we do that of 
ohysical deformities, we gradually eliminate them 
from our society, — we love them, but open the win- 



go6 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

dow and let them go. By the time decent people 
reach middle age they have weeded their circle pretty 
well of these unfortunates, unless they have a taste 
for such animals; in which case, no matter what 
their position may be, there is something, you may 
be sure, in their natures akin to that of their WTctched 
parasites. 

The divinity-student wished to know what I 

thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies ; did I 
believe in love at first sight ? 

Sir, — said I, — all men love all w^omen. That is 
the prinin-facie aspect of the case. The Court of 
Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do so ; 
and the individual man is bound to show cause why 
he does not love any particular woman. A man, 
says'one of my old black-letter law-books, may show 
divers good reasons, as thus : He hath not seen the 
person named in the indictment ; she is of tender 
age, or the reverse of that ; she hath certain personal 
disqualifications, — as, for instance, she is a black- 
amoor, or hath an ill-favored countenance ; or, his 
capacity of loving being limited, his affections are 
engrossed by a previous comer ; and so of other 
conditions. Not the less is it true that he is bound 
by duty and inclined by nature to love each and 
every woman. Therefore it is that each woman 
virtually summons every man to show cause why he 
doth not love her. This is not by written document, 
or direct speech, for the most part, but by certedn 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 257 

Bigns of silk, gold, and other materials, which say to 
all men, — Look on me and love, as in duty bound. 
Then the man pleadeth his special incapacity, what- 
soever that may be, — as, for instance, impecuniosity, 
or that he hath one or many wives in his household, 
or that he is of mean figure, or small capacity; of 
which reasons it may be noted, that the first is, 
according to late decisions, of chiefest authority. — So 
far the old law-book. But there is a note from an 
older authority, saying that every woman doth also 
love each and every man, except there be some good 
reason to the contrary ; and a very observing friend 
of mine, a young unmarried cltTgyman, tells me, 
that, so far as his experience goes, he has reason to 
think the ancient author had fact to justify his state- 
ment. 

ril t('ll you how it is with the pictures of women 
we fall in love with at first sight 

We a'n't talking about pictures, — said the 

landlady's daughter, — we're talking about women. 

I understood that we were speaking of love at 
sight, — I remarked, mildly. — Now, as all a man 
knows about a woman whom he looks at is just 
what a picture as big as a copper, or a " nickel," 
rather, at the bottom of his eye can teach him, I 
think I am right in saying we are talking about the 
pictures of women. — Well, now, the reason why a 
man is not desperately in love with ten thousand 
women at once is just that which prevents all our 



258 'JfHK AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-T'ABLE. 

portraits being distinctly seen upon that wall. They 
all are painted there by reflection from our faces, but 
because all of them are painted on each spot, and 
each on the same surface, and many other objects at 
the same time, no one is seen as a picture. But 
darken a chamber and let a single pencil of rays in 
through a key-hole, then you have a picture on the 
wall. We never fall in love with a woman in dis- 
tinction from women, until we can get an image of 
her through a pin-hole; and then we can see nothing 
else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in 
our mental camera-obscura. 

My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave 

town whenever the anniversaries come round. 

What's the difficulty? — Why, they all want him 
to get up and make speeches, or songs, or toasts ; 
which is just the very thing he doesn't want to do. 
He is an old story, he says, and hates to show on 
these occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, 
and can't do without him, and feel all over his pooi 
weak head until they get their fingers on the fonta' 
nelle, (the Professor will tell you what this means, — 
he says the one at the top of the head always re- 
mains open in poets,) until, by gentle pressure on 
that soft pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the 
point of acquiescence. 

There are times, though, he says, when it is a 
pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to 
rush out into one's garden and clutch up a handful 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 259 

of what grows there, — weeds and violets together, — 
not cutting them off, but pulling them up by the 
roots with the brown earth they grow in sticking to 
them. That's his idea of a post-prandial perform- 
ance. Look here, now. These verses I am going 
to read you, he tells me, were pulled up by the roots 
just in that way, the other day. — Beautiful enter- 
tainment, — names there on the plates that flow from 
nil English-speaking tongues as familiarly as atid or 
the; entertainers known wherever good poetry and 
f;iir title-pages are held in esteem; guest a kind- 
hearted, modest, genial, hopeful poet, who sings to 
the hearts of his countrymen, the British people, the 
songs of good cheer which the better days to come, 
as all honest souls trust and believe, will turn into 
the prose of common life. ]\Iy friend, the Poet, says 
you must not read such a string of verses too liter- 
ally. If he trimmed it nicely below, you wouldn't 
see the roots, he says, and he likes to keep them, and 
a little of the soil clinging to them. 

This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read to 
nis and our friend, the Poet : — 

A GOOD TIME GOING! 

Brave sln^rer of the coming time. 

Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, 
Crowned with tlie noblest wreath of rhyme, 

The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, 
Good-bye ! Good-bye ! — Our hearts and hands, 

Our b*ps in honest Saxon phrases, 



2 GO THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Cry, God be with him, till lie stands 
His feet anion"; the English daisies I 



*Tis here we part ; — for other eyes 

The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, 
The dripping arras that plunge and rise, 

The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, 
The kerchiefs waving from the pier, 

The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, 
The deep blue desert, lone and drear, 

With heaven above and home before him I 

His home ! — the Western giant smiles, 

And twirls the spotty globe to find it,- - ' 
This little speck the British Isles? 

'Tis but a freckle, — never mind it ! — 
He laughs, and all his prairies roll. 

Each curglinnr cataract roars and chuckles. 
And ridges stretched from pole to pole 

Heave till they crack their iron knuckles I 

But memory blushes at the sneer, 

And Honor turns with frown defiant. 
And Freedom, leaning on her spear. 

Laughs louder than the laughing giant : — 
" An islet is a world," she said, 

*' When glory with its dust has blended. 
And Britain keeps her noble dead 

Till earth and seas and skies are rended ! " 

Beneath each swinging forest-bough 
Some arm as stout in death rejioses, — 

From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow 
Her valor's life-blood runs in roses ; 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TADLE. 261 

Nay, let our brothers of the West 

Write smiling in their florid pages, 
One-half her soil has walked the rest 

lu poets, heroes, martyrs, sages ! 

Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp, 

From sea- weed fringe to mountiiin heather, 
The British oak with rooted grasp 

Her slender handful holds together; — 
With c'liffs of white- and bowers of green, 

And Ocean narrowing to caress her, 
And hills ami threaded streams between, — 

Our little mother isle, God bless her I 

In earth's broad temple where we stand, 

Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us. 
We hold the missal in our hand, 

Bright with the lines our Mother taught us: 
Where'er its blazoned page betrays 

The glistening links of gilded fetters. 
Behold, the half-turned leaf displays 

Her rubric stained in crinison letters ! 

Enough ! To speed a parting friend 

'Tis vain alike to speak and listen ; — 
Yet stay, — these feeble accents blend 

With rays of light from eyes that glisten. 
Good-bye ! once more, — and kindly tell 

In words of peace the young world's story, — 
And say, besides, — we love too well 

Our mother's soil, our father's glory ! 

When my friend, the Professor, found that my 
friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this fuJl 



262 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

blown style, he got a little excited, as yau may have 
seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up 
The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and 
thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has 
often tried, and now he was determined to try again. 
So when some professional friends of his called him 
up, one day, after a feast of reason and a regular 
" freshet " of soul which had lasted two or three 
hours, he read them these verses. He introduced 
them with a few remarks, he told me, of which the 
only one he remembered was this : that he had 
rather write a single line which one among them 
should think worth remembering than set them all 
laughing with a string of epigrams. It was all 
right, I don't doubt ; at any rate, that was his fancy 
then, and perhaps another time he may be obsti- 
nately hilarious ; however, it may be that he is 
growing graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks 
and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a 
kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said 
the other day. 

You must listen to this seriously, for I think the 

Professor was very much in earnest when he wrote 

t. 

THE TWO AKMIES. 

As Life's unending column pours, 

Two marshalled hosts are seen, — 
Two armies on the trampled shores 

That Death flows black between. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 263 

One marclies to the dnim-beat's roll, 

The wide-mouthed clarion's bray, 
And bears upon a crimson scroll, 

' Our glory is to slay." 

One moves in silence by the stream, 

"With sad, yet watchful eyes, 
Calm as the patient planet's gleam 

That walks the clouded skies. 

Along its front no sabres shine, 

No blood-red pennons wave ; 
Its banner bears the single line, 

" Our duty is to save." 

For those no death-bed's lingering shade; 

At Honor's trumpet-call, 
With knitted brow and lifted blade 

In Glory's aruis they falL 

For these no clashing falchions bright, 

No stirring battle-cry ; 
The bloodless stabber calls by night, — 

Each answers, " Here am I 1 " 

For those the sculptor's laurelled bust, 

The builder's marble piles. 
The anthems pealing o'er their dust 

Throujijh lonjj cathedral aisles. 

For these the blossom-sprinkled turf 

That floods the lonely graves, 
When Spring rolls in her sea-green Burf 

In flowery-foaming waves. 



204 fHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Two paths lead upward from below, 

And angels wait above, 
Who count each burning life-drop's flow, 

Each falling tear of Love. 

Though from the Hero's bleeding breast 

Her pulses Freedom drew, 
Though the white lilies in her crest 

Sprang from that scarlet dew, — 

While Valor's haughty champions wait 

Till all their scars are shown, 
Love walks unchallenged through the gate, 

To sit beside the Throne ! 



X. 

[The schoolmistress came down with a rose in 
her hair, — a fresh June rose. She has been walking 
early; she has brought back two others, — one on 
each cheek. 

I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I 
•ould muster for the occasion. Those two blush- 
oses I just spoke of turned into a couple of dam- 
asks. I suppose all this went through my mind, for 
^h'ls was what I went on to say : — ] 

I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers 
our mothers and sisters used to love and cherish, 
those which grow beneath our eaves and by our 
doorstep, are the ones we always love best. If the 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 2Go 

Houyhnhnins should ever catch me, and, finding 
me particularly vicious and unmanageable, send a 
man-tamer to Rareyfy me, I'll tell you what drugs 
he would have to take and how he would have to 
u^e them. Imagine yourself reading a number of 
the Hoiiyhnhnm Gazette, giving an account of 
such an experiment. 

" MAX-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY. 

" The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently cap- 
tured was subjected to the art of our distinguished 
man-tamer in })resence of a numerous assembly 
The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely 
confined by straps to prevent his sudden and dan 
gerous tricks of shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. 
His countenance expressed the utmost degree of 
ferocity and cunning. 

" The operator took a handful of budding- lilac- 
leaves, and crushing them slightly between his hoofs, 
so as to bring out their peculiar fragrance, fastened 
them to the end of a long pole and held them tow- 
ards the creature. Its expression changed in an 
instant, — it drew in their fragrance eagerly, and 
attempted to seize them with its soft split hoofs. 
Having thus quieted his suspicious subject, the 
operator proceeded to tie a blue hyacinth to the end 
of the pole and held it out towards the wild animal.. 
The effect was magical. Its eyes filled as if with 
raindrops, and its lips trembled as it pressed them 

12 



2G6 THE AUTOCRAT 01- THE BREAKFAST -TABLE. 

to the flower. After this it was perfectly quiet, and 
brought a measure of corn to the man-tamer, with- 
out showing the least disposition to strike with the 
feet or hit from the shoulder." 

That will do for the Houyhnhnm Gazette. — Do 
you ever wonder why poets talk so much about 
flowers? Did you ever hear of a poet who did not 
talk about them ? Don't you think a poem, which, 
for the sake of being original, should leave them out, 
would be like those verses where the letter o or e or 
some other is omitted? No, — they will bloom over 
and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to 
the end of time, always old and always new. Why 
should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than 
the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars? 
Look at Nature. She never wearies of saying over 
her floral pater-noster. In the crevices of Cyclopean 
•walls, — in the dust where men lie, dust also, — on 
the mounds that bury huge cities, the wreck of Nin- 
eveh and the Babel-heap, — still that same sweet 
prayer and benediction. The Amen I of Nature is 
always a flower. 

Are you tired of my trivial personalities, — those 
splashes and streaks of sentiment, sometimes per- 
haps of sentimentality, which you may see when I 
show you my heart's corolla as if it were a tulip ? 
Pr ly, do not give yourself the trouble to fancy me 
an idiot whose conceit it is to treat himself as an 



THE AI3rOCRAT OF THE BREaKFAST-TABLE. 267 

exceptional being. It is because you are just like 
me that I talk and know that you will listen. W2 
are all splashed and streaked with sentiments, — not 
with precisely the same tints, or in exactly the same 
patterns, but by the same hand and from the same 
palette. 

I don't believe any of you happen to have just 
the same passion for the blue hyacinth which I have, 
— very certainly not for the crushed lilac-leaf-buds; 
many of you do not know how sweet they are. 
You love the smell of the sweet-fern and the bay- 
berry -leaves, I don't doubt; but I hardly think that 
the last bewitches you with young memories as it 
does me. For the same reason I come back to 
damask roses, after having raised a good many of 
the rarer varieties. I like to go to operas and con- 
certs, but there are queer little old homely sounds that 
are better than music to me. However, 1 suppose 
it's foolish to tell such things. 

It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time, 

— said the divinity-student; — saying it, however, in 
one of the dead languages, which I think are unpop- 
ular for summer-reading, and therefore do not bear 
quotation as such. 

Well, now, — said 1, — suppose a good, clean, whole- 
some-looking countryman's cart stops opposite my 
door. — Do I w^ant any huckleberries? — If I do not, 
there are those that do. Thereupon my soft-voiced 
handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then the 



268 1""E AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, 
spreads his broad hands around its lower arc to 
confine the wild and frisky berries, and so they run 
nimbly along the narrowing channel until they tum- 
ble rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle oci 
the resounding metal beneath. — I won't say that this 
rushing huckleberry hail-storm has not more music 
for me than the "Anvil Chorus." 

1 wonder how my great trees are coming on 

this summer. 

Where are your great trees, Sir ? — said the 

divinity-student. 

Oh, all round about New England. I call all 
trees mine that I have put my wedding-ring on, 
and I have as many tree-wives as Brigham Young 
has human ones. 

One set's as green as the other, — exclaime(^ 

a boarder, who has never been identified. 

They're all Bloomers, — said the young fellow 
called John. 

[I should have rebuked this trifling with language, 
if our landlady's daughter had not asked me just 
then what I meant by putting my wedding-ring on 
a tree.] 

Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, my 
dear, — said I, — I have worn a tape almost out on 
the rough barks of our old New England elms and 
o+her big trees. — Don't you want to hear me talk 
trees a little now ? That is one of my specialties. 



THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TADLE. 2G* 

[So they all agreed that they should lilvc to hcai 
me talk about trees.] 

I want you to understand, in the first place, that 1 
have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in 
general, and have had several romantic attachments 
to certain trees in particular. Now, if you expect 
me to hold forth in a "scientific" way about my 
tree-loves, — to talk, for instance, of the Ulmus 
Americana, and describe the ciliated edges of its 
samara, and all that, — you are an anserine individ- 
ual, and I must refer you to a dull friend who will 
discourse to you of such matters. What should you 
think of a lover who should describe the idol of his 
heart in the language of science, thus : Class, Mamma- 
lia ; Order, Primates ; Genus, Homo; Species, Euro- 
peus; Variety, Brown; Individual, Ann Eliza ; Dental 

.2 — 2 1 — 1 2—2 3 — 3 , . 

Formula, i ^ .^ c p .^ — i^ m . . , and so on .' 

No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see 
them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they 
are alive, holding their green sun-shades over our 
heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand 
whispering tongues, looking down on us with that 
sweet meekness which belongs to huge, but limited 
organisms, — which one sees in the brown eyes of 
oxen, but most in the patient posture, the out- 
stretched arms, and the heavy-drooping robes of 
these vast beings endowed with life, but not with 
Boul, — which outgrow us and outlive us, but stand 



270 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

helpless, — poor things! — while Nature dresses and 
undresses them, like so many full-sized, but under- 
witted children. 

Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin ? Slowest 
of men, even of English men ; yet delicious in his 
slowness, as is the light of a sleepy eye in woman. 
1 always supposed " Dr. Syntax " was written to 
make fun of him. I have a whole set of his works, 
and am very proud of it, with its gray paper, and 
open type, and long ({\ and orange-juice landscapes. 
The Ptre Gilpin had the kind of science I like in 
the study of Nature, — a little less observation than 
White of Selborne, but a little more poetry. — ^Just 
think of applying the Linnaean system to an elm I 
Who cares how many stamens or pistils that little 
brown flower, which comes out before the leaf, may 
have to classify it by ? What we want is the mean- 
ing, the character, the expression of a tree, as a kind 
and as an individual. 

There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of 
tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in 
the poetry of every language. Take the oak, for 
instance, and we find it always standing as a type 
of strength and endurance. 1 wonder if you ever 
thought of the single mark of supremacy which 
distinguishes this tree from all our other forest-trees ? 
All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting grav- 
ity ; the oaK alone defies it. It chooses the horizon- 
tal direction for its limbs, so that their whole weight 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BnEAKFAST-TAULE. 2?A 

may tell, — and then stretches them out fifty or sixty 
feet, so that the strain nnay be mighty enough to bo 
worth resisting. You will find, that, in passing from 
the extreme downward droop of tlie brancht^s of the 
weeping-willow to the extreme upward inclination 
of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly half a cir- 
cle. At 90^ the oak stops short; to slant upward 
another degree would mark infirmity of purpose ; to 
bend downwards, weakness of organization. The 
American elm betrays something of both ; yet some- 
times, as we shall see, puts on a certain resemblance 
to its stm^dier neighbor. 

It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about 
trees. There is hardly one of them which has not 
peculiar beauties in some fitting place for it. I 
remember a tall poplar of monumental proportions 
and aspect, a vast piUar of glossy green, placed on 
the summit of a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the 
country round. A native of that region saw fit to 
build his house very near it, and, having a fancy that 
it might blow down some time or other, and exter- 
minate himself and any incidental relatives who 
might be "stopping" or "tarrying" with him, — 
also laboring under the delusion that human life is 
under all circumstances to be preferred to vegetable 
existence, — had the great poplar cut down. It is so 
easy to say, " It is only a poplar I" and so much 
harder to replace its living cone than to build a 
granite obelisk ! 



272 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I must tell you about some of my tree-wives, i 
was at one period of my life much devoted to the 
young lady-population of Rhode Island, a small, but 
delightful State in the neighborhood of Pawtucket. 
The number of inhabitants being not very large, I 
had leisure, during my visits to the Providence Plan- 
tations, to inspect the face of the country in the 
intervals of more fascinating studies of physiog- 
nomy. I heard some talk of a great elm a short 
distance from the locality just mentioned. " Let 
us see the great elm," — I said, and proceeded to 
find it, — knowing that it was on a certain farm in 
a place called Johnston, if I remember riglitly. I 
shall never forget my ride and my introduction to 
the great Johnston elm. 

I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I ap- 
proach it for the first time. Provincialism has no 
scale of excellence in man or vegetable ; it never 
knows a first-rate article of either kind when it has 
it, and is constantly taking second and third rate 
ones for Nature's best. I have often fancied the tree 
was afraid of me, and that a sort of shiver came 
over it as over a betrothed maiden when she first 
stands before the unknown to whom she has been 
plighted. Before the measuring-tape the proudest 
tree of them all quails and shrinks into itself. All 
those stories of four or five men stretching their ai na 
around it and not touching each other's fingers, if 
one's pacing the shadow at noon and making ii i 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIL BKKAKFAST-TABLE. 1)73 

many hundred fct^t, die upon its Irafy lips in the 
presence of the awful ribbon which has strangled so 
many false pretensions. 

As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly 
for the object of my journey, the rounded tops of 
the elms rose from time to time at the road-side. 
AVherever one looked taller and fuller than the rest, 
I asked myself,—" Is this it ? " But as I drew 
nearer, they grew smaller, — or it proved, perhaps, 
that two standing in a line had looked like one, 
and so deceived me. At last, all at once, when I 
was not thinking of it, — I declare to you it makes 
my flesh creep when I think of it now, — all at once 
I saw a great, green cloud swelling in (he horizon, so 
vast, so symmetrical, of such Olympian majesty and 
imperial supremacy among the lesser forest-growths, 
that my heart stopped short, then jiimped at my ribs 
as a hunter springs at a five-barred gate, and 1 felt 
all through me, without need of uttering the words, 
—"This is it I" 

You will find this tree described, with many 
others, in the excellent Report upon the Trees and 
Shrubs of iMassachusetts. The author has given my 
friend the Professor credit for some of his measure- 
ments, but measured this tree himself, carefully. It 
is a grand elm for size of trunk, spread erf limbs, and 
muscular development, — one of the first, perhaps the 
first, of the first class of New England eltns. 

The largest actual girth I have ever found at five 

12* 



274 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

feet from the ground is in the great elm lying a 
stone's throw or two north of the main road (if my 
points of compass are right) in Springfield. But 
this has much the appearance of having been formed 
by the union of ^wo trunks growing side by side. 

The West- Springfield elm and one upon North- 
ampton meadows, belong also to the first class of 
trees. 

There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield, 
which used to spread its claws out over a circumfer- 
ence of thirty-five feet or more before they covered 
the foot of its bole up with earth. This is the 
American elm most like an oak of any I have ever 
seen. 

The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size 
and perfection of form. I have seen nothing that 
comes near it in Berkshire County, and few to com- 
pare with it anywhere. 1 am not sure that I remem- 
ber any other first-class elms in New England, but 
there may be many. 

What makes a first-class elm? — Why, size, 

in the first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty 
feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and 
with a spread of branches a hundred feet across^ 
may claim that title, according to my scale. All of 
them, with the questionable exception of the Spring- 
field tree above referred to, stop, so far as my expe- 
rience goes, at about twenty -two or twenty-three 
feet of girth and a hundred and twenty of spread. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 275 

Elms of the second class, generally ranging from 
fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively common. 
The queen of them all is that glorious tree near one 
of the churches in Springfield. Beautiful and stately 
she is beyond all praise. The " great tree" on Bos- 
ton Common comes in the second rank, as does the 
one at Cohasset, which used to have, and probably 
has still, a head as round as an ap|)le-tree, and that 
at Newburyport, with scores of others which might 
be mentioned. These last two have perhaps been 
over-celebrated. Both, however, are pleasing vege- 
tables. The poor old Pittsfield elm lives on its pa.st 
reputation. A wig of false leaves is indispensable 
to make it pres(»ntable. ^ 

[1 don't duubt there may be some monster-elm or 
other, vegetating green, but inglorious, in some re- 
mote New England village, which only wants a 
sacred singer to make it Cc-lcbrated. Send us your 
measurements, — (certified by the postmaster, to 
avoid possible imposition,^ — circumference five feet 
from soil, length of line from buugh-end to bough- 
end, and we will see what can be done for you.] 

1 wish somebody would get us up the follow- 

iiig work : — 

SVLVA NOVANOLICA. 

Photographs of New England Elms and other 
Trees, taken upon the Same Scale of Magnitude. 
With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished 
Literary Gentleman. Boston : & Co 

185.. 



276 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAJLE. 

The same camera should be us'ed, — so far as poo 
sible, — at a fixed distance. Our friend, who hat 
given us so many interesting figures in his " Treei 
of America," must not think this Prospectus invader 
his province ; a dozen portraits, with lively descrip- 
tions, would be a pretty complement to his large, 
work, which, so far as published, 1 find excellent 
If my plan were carried out, and another series of r 
dozen English trees photographed on the same scale, 
the comparison would be charming. 

It has always been a favorite idea of mine to 
bring the life of the Old and the New World face 
to face, by an accurate comparison of their various 
types of organization. We should begin with man, 
of course; institute a large and exact comparison 
between the development of la pianta nmana^ as 
Alfieri called it, in diflerent sections of each country, 
in the ditlerent callings, at different ages, estimating 
height, weight, force by the dynamometer and the 
spirometer, and finishing off with a series of typical 
photographs, giving the principal national physiog- 
nomies. Mr. Hutchinson has given us some excel- 
lent English data to begin \^^th. 

Then I would follow this up by contrasting the 
various parallel forms of life in the two continents. 
Our naturalists have often referred to this inciden- 
tally or expressly ; but the animus of Nature in the 
two half globes of the planet is so momentous a 
point of interest to our race, that it should be made 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLl-;. 277 

a subject of express and elaborate siudy. Go out 
with me into that walk which we call the Mall^ and 
look at the English and American elms. The Amer- 
ican elm is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, and droop- 
ing as if from languor. The English elm is com- 
pact, robust, holds its branches up, and carries its 
leaves for weeks longer than our own native tree. 

Is this typical of the creative force on the two 
sides of the ocean, or not? Nothing but a careful 
comparison through the whole realm of life can 
answer this question. 

There is a parallelism without identity in the 
animal and vegetable life of the two continents, 
which favors the task of comparison in an extraor- 
dinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike in 
many ways, yet not the same, both elms, yet easily 
distinguishable, just so we have a complete flora and 
a fauna, which, parting from the same ideal, embody 
it with various modifications. Inventive power is 
the only quality of which the Creative Intelligence 
Beems to be economical ; just as with our largest 
human minds, that is the divinest of faculties, and 
the one that most exhausts the mind which exercises 
it. As the same patterns have very commonly been 
followed, we can see which is worked out in the 
largest spirit, and determine the exact limitation?* 
under which the Creator places the movement of 
life in all its manifestations in either locality. We 
should find ourselves in a very false position, if it 



278 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

should prove that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but 
die out, if not kept up by fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox 
and other more or less wise persons have maintained 
It may turn out the other way, as I have heard one 
of our literary celebrities argue, — and though I took 
the other side, I liked his best, — that the American is 
the Englishman reinforced. 

Will you walk out and look at those elms 

with me after breakfast? — I said to the school- 
mistress. 

[I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that 
she blushed, — as I suppose she ought to have done, 
at such a tremendous piece of gallantry as that was 
for our boarding-house. On the contrary, she turned 
a little pale, — but smiled brightly and said, — Yes, 
with pleasure, but she must walk towards her school. 
— She went for her bonnet. — The old gentleman 
opposite followed her with his eyes, and said he 
wished he was a young fellow. Presently she came 
down, looking very pretty in her half-mourning bon- 
net, and carrying a school-book in her hand.] 

MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 

This is the shortest way, — she said, as we came to 
a corner. — Then we won't take it, — said I. — The 
schoolmistress laughed a little, and said she was ten 
minutes early, so she could go round. 

We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English 
elms. The gray squirrels were out looking for their 



THE AUTOCRAT OF Tin. nnKAKFAST-TABLE. 275 

Droakfasts, and one of tlicm came toward us in light, 
soft, internnittcnt leaps, until he was close to the rail 
of the burial-ground. He was on a grave with a 
broad blue-slate-stone at its head, and a shrub growing 
on it. The stone said this v/as the grave of a young 
man who was the son of ar> Honorable gentleman, 
and wlio died a hundred years ago and more. — Oh, 
yes, died^ — with a siuall triangular mark in one 
breast, and another smaller opposite, in his back, 
where another young man's rapier had slid through 
his body ; and so he lay down out there on the Com- 
mon, and was found cold the next morning, with the 
night-dews and the deatli-dews mingled on his A)rt'- 
head. 

Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave, — 
said I. — His bones lie where his body was laid so 
long ago, and where the stone says they lie, — which 
is more than can be said of most of the tenants of 
this and several other burial-grounds. 

[The most accursed act of Vandalism ever com- 
mitted within my knowledge was the uprooting of 
the ancient gravestones in three at least of our city 
burialgrounds, and one at least just outside the city, 
and planting them in rows to suit the taste for sym- 
metry of the perpetrators. Many years ago, when 
this disgraceful process was going on under my eyes, 
I addressed an indignant remonstrance to a leading 
journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary ele- 
gance, or too warm in its language ; for no notice 



280 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE. 

was taken of it, and the hyena-horror was allowed 
to complete itself in the face of daylight. I have 
never got over it. The bones of my own ancestors, 
being entombed, lie beneath their own tablet; but 
the upright stones have been shuflled about like 
chessmen, and nothing short of the Day of Judgment 
will tell whose dust lies beneath any of those records, 
meant by afl'ection to mark one small spot as sacred 
to some cherished memory. Shame ! shame I shame ! 
— that is all 1 can say. It was on public thorough- 
fares, under the eye of authority, that this infamy 
was enacted. The red Indians would have known 
better; the selectmen of an African kraal-village 
would have had more respect for their ancestors. I 
should like to see the gravestones which have been 
disturbed all removed, and the ground levelled, leav- 
ing the flat tombstones ; epitaphs were never famous 
for truth, but the old reproach of " Here lies " never 
had such a wholesale illustration as in these out- 
raged burial-places, where the stone does lie above, 
and the bones do not lie beneath.] 

Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's 
sigh over poor Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I 
think. Twenty years old, and out there fighting 
another young fellow on the Common, in the cool 
of that old July evening ; — yes, there must have been 
love at the bottom of it. 

The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in 
her hand, through the rails, upon the grave of Benja 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKI- AST-TABLE. 281 

min Woodbridge. That was all her comment upon 
what I tokl her. — How women love Love I said I ;— 
but she did not speak. 

We came opposite the head of a place or court 
running eastward from the main street. — Look down 
there, — I said, — I\Iy friend the Professor lived in that 
house at the left hand, next the furtiier corner, for 
years and years. He died out of it, the other day. — 
Died? — said the schoolmistress. — Certainly, — said I. 
—We die out of houses, just as we die out of our 
bodies. A commercial smash kills a hundred men's 
houses for them, as a railroad crash kills their mortal 
frames and drives out the immortal tenants. Men 
sicken of houses until at last they quit them, as the 
soul leaves its body when it is tired of its infirmities. 
The body has been called " the house we live in"; 
the house is quite as much the body we live in. 
Shall 1 tell you some things the Professor said the 
other day ? — Do I — said the schoolmistress. 

A man's body, — said the Professor, — is whatever 
is occupied by his will and his sensibility. The 
small room down there, where I wrote those papers 
you remember reading, was much more a portion of 
my body than a paralytic's senseless and motionless 
arm or leg is of his. 

The soul of a man has a series of concentric en- 
velopes round it, like the core of an onion, or the in- 
nermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural 
garment of flesh and blood. Then, his artificial in- 



282 Tn^J AUTOCHAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TACLE. 

teguments, wi+b their true skin of solid studs, their 
cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted 
pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single cham- 
ber or a stalely mansion. And then, the whole visi- 
ble world, in which Time buttons him up as in a 
loose outside wrapper. 

You shall observe, — the Professor said, — for, like 
Mr. John IIuFiter and other great men, he brings in 
that shall with great eflect sometimes, — you shall 
observe that a man's clothing or series of envelopes 
does aftev a c^":tain time mould itself upon his in- 
dividual !iaturc. We know this of our hats, and are 
always rem'nr'.ed of it when we happen to put them 
on wrong iide foremost. We soon find that the 
beaver 16 ?. hollow cast of the skull, with all its 
irreguld" jjmps and depressions. Just so all that 
clothej X A^an, even to the blue sky which caps his 
hea*^,- J iittle loosely, — shapes itself to fit each par- 
ticular being beneath it. Farmers, sailors, a^^trono- 
mers, poets, lovers, condemned criminals, all find it 
dilferent, according to the eyes with which they 
severally look. 

But our houses shape themselves palpably on our 
inner and outer natures. See a householder breaking 
up and you will be sure of it. There is a shell-fish 
which builds all manner of smaller shells into the 
walls of its own. A house is never a home until we 
nave crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives be- 
sides those of our own past. See what these axe 
and you can tell what the occupant is. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIK BREAKFAST-TABLE. 283 

I had no idea, — said the Professor, — until I palled 
ap my domestic establishment the other day, what 
an enormous quantity of roots I had been making 
during the years I was planted there. Why, there 
wasn't a nook or a corner that some fibre had not 
worked its way into; and when I gave the last 
■^Tcnch, each of them seemed to shriek like a man- 
drake, as it broke its hold and came away. 

There is nothing that happens, you know, which 
must not inevitably, and which does not actually, 
photograph itself in every conceivable aspect and in 
all dimensions. Tlie infinite galleries of the Past 
await but one brief process and all their pictures will 
be called out and fixed forever. We had a curious 
illustration of the great fact on a very humble scale. 
When a certain bookcase, long standing in one place, 
for which it was built, was removed, there was 
the exact image on the wall of the whole, and of 
many of its portions. But in the midst of this pic- 
ture was another, — the precise outline of a map 
which had hung on the wall before the bookcase was 
built We had all forgotten everything about the 
map until we saw its photograph on the w^all. 
Then we remembered it, as some day or other we 
may remember a sin which has been built over and 
covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away 
from before the wall of Infinity, where the wrong- 
doing stands self-recorded. 

The Professor lived in that house a long time<— * 



284 THE AUTOCfiAT OF THE BRi-UKFAST-TABLE. 

not twenty years, but pretty near it. When he 
entered that door, two shadows glided over the 
threshold ; five lingered in the doorway when he 
passed through it for the last time, — and one of the 
shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than 
his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place ! 
Death rained through every roof but his; children 
came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded 
away, threw themselves away ; the whole drama of 
life was played in that stock-company's theatre of a 
dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep 
sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling. 
Peace be to those walls, forever, — the Professor said, 
— for the many pleasant years he' has passed within 
them I 

The Professor has a friend, now living at a dis- 
tance, who has been with him in many of his 
changes of place, and who follows him in imagina- 
tion with tender interest wherever he goes. — In that 
little court, where he lived in gay loneliness so 
long,— 

— in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, 
where it comes loitering down from its mountain 
fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the small 
proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it 
gets proud and swollen and wantons in huge luxuri- 
ous oxbows about the fair Northampton meadows, 
and at last overflows the oldest inhabitant's memory 
in profligate freshets at Hartford and all along its 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE RnEAKFAST-TABLE. 285 

ewer shores, — up in that caravansary on the banks 
of the stream where Ledyard hiunclu'd his loi; canoe, 
and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Com- 
mencement processions, — where blue Ascutney looked 
down from the far distance, and tlie hills of Beulah, 
as the Professor always called them, rolled up the 
opposite horizon in soft climbing masses, so sugges- 
tive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he 
used to look through his old " Dollond " to see if the 
Shining On<'s were not within range of sight, — 
sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks which 
carried them by the peacefnl common, through the 
solemn village lying in catalei)tie stillness under the* 
shadow of the roil of Moses, to the terminus of their 
harmless^! roll, — the patulous fage, in the Professor's 
classic dialect, — the spreading beech, in more familiar 
phrase, — [stop and breathe here a moment, for the 
sentence is not done yet, and we have another long 
journey before us,j — 

— and again once more up among those other hills 
that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonie, — dark 
stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that shine be- 
neath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed 
demi-blondes, — in the home overlooking the winding 
stream and the smooth, flat meadow ; looked down 
upon by wild hills, where the tracks of bears and cata- 
mounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter 
snow; facini? the twin summits which rise in the far 
Nortn, the highest waves of the great laiul-storm 



28G THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

in all this billowy region, — suggestive to mad fancieji 
of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched 
out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away 
beneath the leaves of the forest, — in that home where 
seven blessed summers were passed, which stand in 
memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the 
beatific vision of the holy dreamer, — 

— in tliat modest dwelling we were just looking 
at, not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its 
drab and mahogany, — full t)f great and little boys' 
playthings from top to bottom, — in all these summer 
or winter nests he was always at home and always 
welcome. 

This long articulated sigh of reminiscences, — this 
calenture which shows nie the maple-sfcadowed 
plains of Berkshire and the mountain-circled green 
of Grafton beneath the salt waves which come feel- 
ing their way along the wall at my feet, restless and 
soft-touching as blind men's busy fingers, — is for 
that friend of mine who looks into the waters of the 
Patapsco and sees beneath them the same visions 
which paint themselves for me in the green depths 
of the Charles. 

Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress ? — 

"Why, no, — of course not. 1 have been talking with 
you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don't 
think I should expect any woman to listen to such a 
sentence as that long one, without giving her a 
cnance io put in a word ? 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BnEAKFAST-TAREE. 287 

-What did I say to the schoolmistress?— 



Permit me one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy 
and good-breed i np; ; but in this particular case, as I 
waj allowed the privilege of walking alone witli a very 
interesting young woman, you must allow me to 
remark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, 
used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is nullum 
tui neg-otii. 

When the schoolmistress and I reached the school- 
room door, the damask roses I spoke of were so 
much heightened in color by exercise that I felt sure 
it would be useful to h(T to take a stroll like this 
every morning, and made up my mind 1 would ask 
her to let me join her again. 

EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL. 

( To be burned unread.) 

I am afraid I have been a fool ; for I have told as 
much of myself to this young person as if she were 
of that ripe and discreet age which invites confidence 
and expansive utterance. I have been low-spirited 
and listless, lately, — it is coffee, I think, — (I observe 
that which is bought readj/'g-round never afTects the 
head,) — and I notice that I tell my secrets too easily 
when I am downiiearted. 

There are inscriptions on our hearts, wliich, like 
chat on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen except 
at dead-low tide. 



288 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the 
side of my deepest ocean-buried inscription ! 

Oh, no, no no! a thousand times, no! — Yet 

what is this which has been shaping itself in my 
soul ? — Is it a thought ? — is it a dream ? — is it n pas- 
sion? — Then I know what comes next. 

The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy 

hill ; those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in, 
in bad weather. But there are iron bars to all the win- 
dows. When it is fair, some of us can stroll outside 
that very high fence. But I never see much life in 
those groups I sometimes meet ; — and then the care- 
ful man watches them so closely ! How I remember 
that sad company I used to pass on fine mornings, 
when I was a schoolboy ! — B., with his arms full of 
yellow weeds, — ore from the gold mines which he 
discovered long before we heard of California, — Y., 
born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake, (the 
boys said.) dogged, explosive, — made a Polyphemus 
of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt 
with a stick, — (the multi-millionnaires sent him a 
trifle, it was said, to buy another eye with ; but boys 
are jealous of rich folks, and I don't doubt the good 
people made him easy for life,) — how I remember 
them all! 

I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, 
in " Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its 
hand from its breast, showed its heart, — a burning 
coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on yonder sum- 



TUE AUTOCRAl OF TIIK BRKAKl AST-TABLE. 



289 



rait. Go there on the next visiting-day, and ask that 
figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those 
Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the 
sitting posture, to lift its hand,-— look upon its hearl, 
and b(3hold, not fire, but ashes. — No, I must not 
think of such an ending! Dying would be a much 
more gentlemanly way of meeting the dilliculty. 
Make a will and leave her a house or two and some 
stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take 
away her necessity for keeping school. — I wonder 
what nice young man's feet would be in my French 
slippers before six months were over ! AVeli, what 
then ? If a man really loves a woman, of course he 
wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were not 
quite sure that he was the best person she could by 
any possibility marry. 

It is odd enough to read over what I have 

just been writing. — It is the merest fancy that ever 
was in the world. I shall never be married. She 
will ; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so 
far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take 
tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No 
coffee, I hope, though, — it depresses me sadly. I 
feel very miserably ; — they nmst have been grinding 
it at home. — Another morning walk will be good for 
me, a]id I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be 
glad of a little fresh air before school. 

The throbbing flushes of the poetical inter- 

18 



290 THE AljTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

♦ mittent have been coming over me from time to 
time of late. Did you ever see that electrical expcri 
ment which consists in passing a flash through letters 
of gold leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some 
name or legend springs out of tlie darkness in char- 
acters of fire ? 

There are songs all written out in my soul, which 
I could read, if the flash might pass through them, — 
but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah! 
but what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion 
has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the 
ragged cirrus of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered 
cumulus of sluggish satiety ? I will call on her 
whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones 
no longer worship, — the immortal maid, who, name 
her what you will, — Goddess, Muse, S|)irit of 
Beauty, — sits by the pillow of every youthful poet, 
and bends over his pale forehead until her tresses lie 
upon his cheek and rain their gold into his dreams. 

MUSA. 

O MY lost Beauty ! — hast thou folded quite 

Thy wings of morning light 

Beyond those iron gates 
Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, 
And Age upon his mound of ashes waits 

To chill our fiery dreams, 
Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy 8tra*w» ? 

Leave me not fadiufj in these weeds of care, 
Whose flowei*s are silvered hair I — 



THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 291 

Have I not loved thee long, 
Though my young lips have often done thee wrong 
And vexed thv heaven-tuned car with careless sons ? 

Ah, wilt tliou yet return. 
Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn ? 

Come to me I — I will flood thy silent shrine 

With my soul's sacred wine, 

And heap thy marble floors 
As the wild spice-troes waste their fragrant stores 
In leafy islands walled with madrepores 

And lapped in Orient seas, 
When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breez*. 

Come to me ! — thou shalt feed on honied words, 

Sweeter than song of birds ; — 

No wailing bulbul's throat. 
No melting dulcimer's melo<lious note, 
When o'er the midnight wave its munnui-s float, 

Thy ravished sense might soothe 
With flow so li([uid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. 

Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, 

Sought in those bowers of green 

Where loop the clustered vines 
And the elose-elinmng dulcamara twines, — 
l*ure pearls of Mayaew wnere the mooniight shines, 

And Summer's fruited gems. 
And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. 

Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waives, — 

Or stretched by grass-grown graves. 

Whose gray, high-shouldered stones. 
Carved with old nan\es Life's time-worn roll disowns, 



292 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 

Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones 

Still slumbering where they lay 
While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away 

Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing I 

Still let me dream and sing, — 

Dream of that winding shore 
Where scarlet cardinals bloom, — for me no more, — 
The stream with heaven beneath its lic^uid floor, 

And clustering nenuphars 
Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars I 

Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed! — 

Come while the rose is red, — 

While blue-eyed Summer smiles 
On the green ripples round yon sunken piles 
Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, 

And on the sultry air 
The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer I 

Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain 

With thrills of wild sweet pain ! — 

On life's autumnal blast. 
Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast, — 
Once loving thee, we love thee to the last ! — 

Behold thy new-tlecked shrine, 
And hear once more the voice that breathed '' Foiever thine! 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 293 



XL 
[The company looked a little flustered one morn- 
ing when I came in, — so much so, that I inquired of 
my neighbor, ihc divinity-student, what had been 
going on. It appears that the young fellow whom 
they call John had taken advantage of my being a 
little late (I having been rather longer than usual 
dressing that morning) to circulate several questions 
involving a quibble or play upon words, — in short, 
containing that indignity to the human understand- 
ing, condemned in the passages fi'om the distin- 
guished moralist of the last century and the illustri- 
ous historian of the present, which 1 cited on a 
former occasion, and known as a pun. After break- 
fast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of 
paper containing some of the questions and their 
answers. I subjoin two or three of them,. to show 
what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless 
talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not 
reetrained by tlje presence of more reflective natures. 
—It w^as asked, " Why tertian and quartan fevers 
were like certain short-lived insects." Some interest- 
ing physiological relation would be naturally sug- 
gested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer 
is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip a day or 
two. — " Why an Englishman must go to the Conti- 



294 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABL& 

nent to weaken his grog or punch." The answer 
proves to have no relation whatever to the temper- 
ance-movement, as no better reason is ^iven than that 
island- (or, as it is absurdly written, He and) water 
won't mix. — But when I came to the next question 
and its answer. I felt that patience ceased to be a 
virtue. " Why an onion is like a piano " is a query 
that a person of sensibility would be slow to pro- 
pose ; but that in an educated community an indi- 
vidual could be found to answer it in these words, — 
" Because it smell odious," quasi, it's melodious, — is 
not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper. 

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such 
things. I know most conversations reported in books 
are altogether above such trivial details, but folly 
will come up at every table as surely as purslain and 
chick weed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This 
young fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I 
know perfectly well ; but he didn't, — he made jokes.] 

I am willing, — I said, — to exercise your ingenuity 
in a rational and contemplative manner. — No, I do 
ilot proscribe certain forms of philosophical specula- 
don which involve an approach to the absurd or the 
ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the 
folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in 
his famous Disputations, " De Sancto Matrimonio." 
I will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by 
reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my 
^"Tiend the Professor. 




THE DEACON 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TUE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205 

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: 
OR THE WONDERFUL " ONE-HOSS-SHAY." 

A LOGICAL STORY. 

Have you board of the wonderful one-lio<»«-shaj, 
That was built in such a lojjical way 
It ran a hundred years to a day. 

And then, of a sudden, it ah, but stay, 

ril tell you what happened without delay, 
Scaring the parson into fits. 
Frightening people out of their wits, — 
Have you ever heard of that, I say ? 

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. 
Georgiux Secundus was then alive, — 
SnuflTy old drone from the German hive . 
That was the year when Lisbon-town 
Saw the earth open and gulp her down, 
And Braddock's army was done so brown, 
Left without a scalp to its crown. 
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day 
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay. 

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, 
There is always somewhere a weakest spot,— 
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, 
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill. 
In sci'ew, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still 
find it somewhere you must and will, — 
Above or below, or within or without, — 
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, 
A chaise breaLs dcTn^ but doesn't wear out. 



296 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLfc 

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, 
With an " I dew vum," or an " I tell yeou"^ 
He would build one shay to beat the taown 
*n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' ; 
It should be so built that it couldn' break daowu . 
— " Fur," said the Deacon, " *t's mighty plain 
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan the strain ; 
V the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 

Is only jest 
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." 

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk 

Where he could find the strongest oak, 

That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke, — 

That was for spokes and floor and sills; 

He sent for lancewood to make the thills ; 

The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees ; 

The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, 

But lasts like iron for things like these ; 

The hubs of logs from the " Settler's ellura," — 

Last of its timber, — they couldn't sell 'em, 

Never an axe had seen their chips, 

And the wedges flew from between their lips, 

Tlieir blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips ; 

Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 

Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 

Steel of the finest, bright and blue ; 

Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide ; 

Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide 

Found in the pit when the tanner died. 

That was the way he " put her through.*' — 

" There ! " said the Deacon, " naow she'll dew . "* 

Do I tel you, I rather guess 

She was a wonder, and nothing less ! 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BHEAKFAST-TABLE. 097 

Colts grew horses, beanls turned gray, 
Deacon and deaconess dropped away, 
Children and grand-childi-en — where were they ? 
But there stocnl the stout old one-hoss-shay 
As I'resh as ou Lisbou-earlhquake-day I 

Eighteen hundred ; — it came and found 
The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound. 
Eighteen hundred increased by ten ; — 
**IIahnsum kerridge " they called it then. 
Eighteen hundred and twenty came ; — 
Running as usual ; much the same. 
Thirty and forty at last arrive, 
And then come fitly, and fifty-five. 

Little of all we value here 

Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 

Without both feeling and looking queer. 

In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, 

So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 

(This is a moral that runs at large ; 

Take it. — You're welcome. — No extra charge.) 

First of November, — the Earthquake-day. — 
There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay, 
A general flavor of mild decay, 
But nothing local, as one may say. 
There couldn't be, — for the Deacon's aii 
Had made it so like in every part 
That thci-e wasn't a chance for one to start 
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, 
And the floor was just as strong as the sills, 
And the panels just a^ strong as the floor. 

And the whippletree neUher less nor more, 
13* 



298 '^HE AUTOCRAT 0I«' THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 

And the back-crossbar as strong as the forfj. 
And spring and axle and hub encore. 
And yet, as a icJwle, it is past a doubt 
In another hour it will be wurn out I 

First of November, 'Fifty-five I 

This morning the parson takes a drive. 

Now, small boys, get out of the way 1 

Here comes the wonderful one-horse-shay, 

Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 

" Huddup 1 " said the parson. — OlT went they 

The parson was working his Sunday's text, — 
Had got tjoji/lfi/t/, and stopped perplexed 
At what the — Moses — was coming next. 
All at once the horse stood still. 
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. 
— First a shiver, and then a thrill. 
Then something decidedly hke a spill, — 
And the parson was sitting upon a rock. 
At half-past nine by the meet'n-house clock,— 
Just the hour of the Earth(juake shock 1 
— ^Vhat do you think the parson found, 
"When he got up and stared around ? 
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
As if it had been to the mill and ground I 
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, 
How it went to pieces ail at once, — 
All at once, and nothing first, — 
JaU as bubbles do when they burst. 

End of the wonderful one-hoss-shav. 
Logic is logic That's all 1 say. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 299 

—I think there is one habit, — I said to our com- 



pany a day or two afterwards — worse than that of 
punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or 
flash terms for words which truly characterize their 
objects. I have known several very genteel idiots 
whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some 
half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of 
two great categories,— /a^*/ or slow. Man's chief end 
was to be a brick. When the great calamities of 
life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of 
as being a good deal cut vp. Nine-tenths of Immau 
existence were summed up in the single word, bore. 
These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols 
of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to 
discriminate. They are the blank checks of intel- 
lectual bankruptcy ; — you may fill them up with 
what idea you like ; it makes no diilerence, for there 
are no funds in the treasury upon which they are 
drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking- 
clubs are the places where these conversational fungi 
spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I under- 
value the proper use and application of a cant word 
or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a 
mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than 
a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the 
intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of 
men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes 
does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly 
the dishwater from the washings of English dandy- 



300 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 

ism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three- 
volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted 
from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and 
diluted to suit the provincial climate. 

The young fellow called John spoke up sharp- 
ly and said, it was "rum" to hear me "pitchin' into 
fellers " for " goin' it in the slang line," when I used 
all the flash words myself just when I pleased. 

1 replied with my usual forbearance. — Cer- 
tainly, to give up the algebraic symbol, because a or 
h is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be unwise. 
I have heard a child laboring to express a certain 
condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation, 
(as it supposed,) all of which could have been suffi- 
ciently explained by the participle — bored, I have 
seen a country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect 
and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his 
valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an 
opinion of a brother-ministnr's discourse which would 
have been abundantly characterized by a peach- 
down-lipped sophomore in the one word — slow. Let 
us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription. 
I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. 
Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can 
swallow most others, and chew such as I cannot 
swallow. 

Dandies are not good for much, but they are good 
for something. They invent or keep in circulation 
those conversational blank checks or counters just 



THE AUIOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAbLE. 301 

ppoken of, wliich intellectual capitalists may some- 
times find it worth their while to borrow of them. 
They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of 
dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate, and 
become, what some old fools would have it, a mat- 
ter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, 
I like dandies well enough, — on one condition. 

What is that, Sir? — said the divinity-student 

That they have pluck. I i'lnd that lies at the 

bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy dressed 
up very fine, who puts his finger in his mouth and 
takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks 
very silly. But if he turns red in the face and 
knotty in the fists, and makes an example of the 
biggest of his assailants, throwing off his fine Leg- 
horn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, 
to consummate the act of justice, his small toggery 
takes on the splendors of the crested helmet that 
frightened Astyanax. You remember that the Duke 
said his dandy officers were his best officers. The 
" Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial eques- 
trian of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing or 
dangerous. But such fellows as Brummei and 
D'Orsay and Byron are not to be snubbed quite so 
easily. Look out for " la main de fer sous *le gant 
de velours," (which I printed in English the other 
day without quotation-marks, thinking whether any 
scarabceus crilicus would add this to his globe and 
roll in giory witn it into the newspapers, — which he 



Ji()2 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

didn't do it, in the charming pleonasm of the Lon 
don language, and therefore I claim the sole merit 
of exposing the same.) A good many powerful and 
dangerous people have had a decided dash of dandy- 
ism about them. There was Alcibiades, the " curled 
son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but 
what would be called a "swell" in these dayb. 
There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer, 
of whom you have heard, — a philosopher, in short, 
whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, 
and is now going to take a generation or more to 
learn over again. Regular dandy, he was. So was 
Marcus Antonius ; and though he lost his game, he 
played for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism 
that spoiled his chance. Petrarca was not to be 
despised as a scholar or a poet, but he was one of 
the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so 
was Lord Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forget- 
ful. Yes, — a dandy is good for something as such ; 
and dandies such as I was just speaking of have 
rocked this planet like a cradle, — aye, and left it 
swinging to this day. — Still, if I were you, I wouldn't 
go to the tailor's, on the strength of these remarks, 
and run up a long bill which will render pockets 
a superfluity in your next suit. Elegans ^^nascitur, 
non fitP A man is born a dandy, as he is born a 
poet. There are heads that can't wear hats ; there 
are necks that can't fit cravats ; there are jaws that 
can't till out collars — (Willi? touched this last point 



IHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 305 

in one of his earlier ambrotypes, if I remember 
rightly) ; there are tournures nothing can humanize, 
and movements nothing can subdue to the gracious 
suavity or elegant languor or stately serenity which 
belong to different styles of dandyism. 

We are forming an aristocracy, as you may ob- 
Rerve, in this country, — not a g-ratut'Dei, nor a jure- 
divino one, — but a de-facto \\\y\wx stratum of being, 
which floats over the turbid waves of common life 
like the iridescent film you may have seen spreading 
over the water about our wharves, — very splendid, 
though its origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, 
or other such unctuous commodities. I say, then, 
we are forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its 
individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, 
as a whol<\ Of course, money is its corner-stone. 
But now observe this. Money kept for two or three 
generations transforms a race, — I don't mean merely 
in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and 
bone. Money buys air and sunshine, in which chil- 
dren grow up more kindly, of course, than in close, 
back streets; it buys country-places to give them 
happy and healthy summers, good nursing, good 
doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and mutton. 

When the spring-chickens come to market 1 

beg your pardon, — that is not what I was going to 
speak of. As the young females of each successive 
season come on, the finest specimens among them, 
other things being equal, are apt to attract those who 



304 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

can afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The 
physical character of the next generation rises in 
consequence. It is plain that certain families have 
in this way acquired an elevated type of face and 
figure, and that in a small circle of city-connections 
one may sometimes find models of both sexes which 
one of the rural counties would find it hard to match 
from all its townships put together. Because there 
is a good deal of running down, of degeneration and 
waste of life, among the richer classes, you must not 
overlook the equally obvious fact I have just spoken 
of, — which in one or two generations more will be, 1 
think, much more patent than just now. 

The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the 
same I have alluded to in connection with cheap 
dandyism. Its thorough manhood, its high-caste 
gallantry, are not so manifest as the plate-glass of its 
windows and the more or less legitimate heraldry of 
its coach-panels. It is very curious to observe of 
how small account military folks are held among our 
Northern people. Our young men must gild their 
spurs, but they need not win them. The equal 
division of property keeps the younger sons of rich 
people above the necessity of military service. Thus 
the army loses an element of refinement, and the 
moneyed upper class forgets what it is to count 
heroism among ils virtues. Still I don't believe 
in any aristocracy without pluck as its backbone. 
Ours may show it when the time comes if it evei 
does come. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 303 

- These United States furnish the greatest 



market for inteWcctu^xl ^recfi fruit of all the places in 
the world. I tliink tfo, at any rate. The demand for 
intellectual labor is so enormous and ihe market so 
far from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like 
unripe gooseberries, — get plucked to make a fool of 
Think of a country which buys eighty thousand 
copies of the " Proverbial Philosophy,'* while the 
author's admiring countrymen have been buying 
twelve thousand! How can one let his fruit hang 
in the sun until it gets fully rijie, while there are 
eighty thousand such hungry mouths ready to swal- 
low it and proclaim its praises? Consequently, there 
never was such a collection of crude pippins and 
half-grown windfalls as our native literature displays 
among its fruits. There are literary green-groceries 
at every corner, which will buy anything, from a 
button-pear to a j)ine-apple. It takes a long appren- 
ticeship to train a whole people to reading and writ- 
ing. The temptation of money and fame is too 
great for young people. Do I not remember that 

glorious moment when the late Mr. we wonH 

say who, — editor of the we won't say what, 

offered me the sum of fifty cents per double- 
columned quarto page for shaking my young boughs 
over his foolscap apron ? Was it not an intoxicat 
ing vision of gold and glory? I should doubtlesi 
have revelled in its wealth and splendor, but foi 
learning that the Jlftf/ cents was to be considered a 



806 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a literal 
expression of past fact or present intention. 

Beware of making your moral staple consist 

of the negative virtues. It is good to j^bstain, and 
teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or iiurt- 
ful. But making a business of it leads to emacia- 
tion of character, unless one feeds largely also on 
the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic ben- 
evolence. 

I don't believe one word of what you are 

saying, — spoke up the angular female in black bom- 
bazine. 

I am sorry you disbelieve it. Madam, — I said, 
and added softly to my next neighbor, — but you 
prove it. 

The young fellow sitting near me winked ; and 
the divinity-student said, in an undertone, — Oplime 
dictum. 

Your talking Latin, — said I, — reminds me ol an 
odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read so 
much of that language, that his English half turned 
into it. He got caught in town, one hot summer, in 
pretty close quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a 
series of city pastorals. Eclogues he called them, 
and meant to have published them by subscription. 
i remember some of his verses, if you want to hear 
ihern. — You, Sir, (addressing myself to the divinity- 
student,) and all such as have been through college, 
or, what is the same thing, received an honorary 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK 307 

degree, will understand them without a dictionary 
The old man had a great deal to say about " SBstiva- 
tion," as he called it, in opposition, as one might 
say, to hibarnation. Intramural aestivation, or town- 
life in summer, he would say, is a peculiar form of 
suspended existence, or semi-asphyxia. One wakes 
up from it about the beginning of the last week 
in September. This is what I remember of hia 
poem : — 

iESTlVATION. 

An Unpublished Poeniy hy my late Latin Tutor 

Lv candcnt ire the solar splendor flames ; 
The foles, languescent, pcnd from arid ramcs ; 
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, 
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. 

How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, 
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, 
Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, 
And bibc the flow from lon<xicaudate kine ! 

To me, alas ! no verdurous visions corae, 
Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, — 
No concave vast repeats the tender hue 
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue 1 

Me wretched ! Let me curr to quercine shades 1 
EfTund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids 1 
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump, — 
Depart, — be off, — excede, — evade, — erump I 



308 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I have lived by the sea-shore and by the* 

mountains. — No, I am not going to say which is 
best. The one where your place is is the best for 
you. But this difTerence there is: you can domesti- 
cate mountains, but the sea is feroR natures. You 
may have a hut, or know the owner of one, on the 
mountain-side ; you see a light half-way up its as- 
cent in the evening, and you know there is a home, 
and you might share it. You have noted certain 
trees, perhaps ; you know the particular zone where 
the hemlocks look so black in October, when the 
maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs and 
intaglios have electrotyped themselves in the medal- 
lions that hang round the walls of your memory's 
chamber. — The sea remembers nothing. It is feline. 
It licks your feet, — its huge flanks purr very plea- 
santly for you ; but it will crack your bones and eat 
you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from 
its jaws as if nothing had happened. The moun- 
tains give their lost children berries and water ; the 
sea mocks their thirst and lets them die. The moun- 
tains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity ; the 
sea has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The 
mountains lie about like huge ruminants, their broad 
backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle. The 
sea smooths its silver scales until you cannot see 
their joints, — but their shining is that of a snake's 
belly, after all. — In deeper suggestiveness I find as 
great a diflerence, The mountains dwarf mankind 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 309 

and foreshorten the procession of its long genera- 
tions. The sea drowns out humanity and time ; it 
has no sympathy with either; for it belongs to eter- 
nity, and of that it sings its monotonous song for- 
ever and ever. 

Yet I should love to have a little box by the sea- 
shore. I should love to gaze out on the wild feline 
element from a front window of my own, just as I 
should love to look on a caged panther, and see it 
stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap 
its smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to hish itself 
into rage and show its white teeth and spring at its 
bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, to me, harm- 
less fury. — And then, — to look at it with that inward 
eye, — who does not love to shuffle off time and its 
concerns, at intervals, — to forget who is President 
and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what 
language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the 
firmament his particular planetary system is huug 
upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it 
beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging when 
the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing 
just as steadily after the human chorus has died out 
and man is a fossil on its shores ? 

What should decide one, in choosirg a sum- 
mer residence ? — Constitution, first of all. How much 
enow could you melt in an hour, if you were planted 
in a hogshead of it? Comfort is essential to enjoy- 
ment. All sensitive people should remember that 



310 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

persons in easy circumstances suffer much more frokw 
cold in summer — that is, the warm half of the year 
— than in winter, or the other half. You must cut 
your climate to your constitution, as much as your 
clothing to your shape. After this, consult your taste 
and convenience. But if you would be happy in 
Berkshire, you must carry mountains in your brain ; 
and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must have an 
ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos with 
you ; you must match her piece, or she will never 
give it up to you. 

The schoolmistress said, in a rather mischiev- 
ous way, that she was afraid some minds or souls 
would be a little crowded, if they took in the Rocky 
Mountains or the Atlantic. 

Have you ever read the little book called " The 
Stars and the Earth ? " — said I. — Have you seen the 
Declaration of Independence photographed in a sur- 
face that a fly's foot would cover ? The forms or 
conditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell you, 
are nothing in themselves, — only our way of looking 
at things. You are right, I think, however, in recog- 
nizing the category of Space as being quite as appli- 
cable to minds as to the outer world. Every mar; 
of reflection is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly- 
dcflned circle which is drawn about his intellect. He 
has a perfectly clear sense that the fragments of his 
intellectual circle include the curves of many othei 
minds of which he is cognizant. He often recognizea 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 311 

these as manifestly concentric with his own, but of 
less radius. On the other hand, when we find a 
portion of an arc on the outside of oiu: own, we say 
it intersects ours, but are very slow to confess or to 
see that it circumscribes it. Every now and then a 
man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation^ 
and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. 
After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had 
been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and 
fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that 1 had 
to spread these to fit it. 

If I thought I should ever see the Alps ! — 

said the schoolmistress. 

Perhaps you will, some time or other, — 1 said. 

It is not very likely, — she answered. — I have had 
one or two opportunities, but I had rather be any- 
thing than governess in a rich family. 

- [Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman I Well, 
I can't say I like you any the worse for it. How 
long will school-keeping take to kill you ? Is it pos- 
sible the poor thing works with her needle, too ? I 
don't like those marks on the side of her forefiiiirer. 

Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view 
Figures in the foreground ; two of them standing 

apart ; one of them a gentleman of oh, — ah, — 

yes I the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning 
on his shoulder. — The ingenuous reader will under- 
stand that this was an internal, private, personal, 
subjective diorama, seen for one instant on the back- 



512 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK. 

ground of my o-svn consciousness, and abolished into 
black nonentity by the first question which recalled 
me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron 
shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a 
shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but 
honest shop-boy's head, just taken oH' by its sudden 
and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the 
sidewalk) had come down in front of it " by the 
run."] 

Should you like to hear what moderate 

wishes life brings one to at last ? I used to be very 
ambitious, — wasteful, extravagant, and luxurious in 
all my fancies. Read too much in the " Arabian 
Nights." Must have the lamp, — couldn't do without 
the ring. Exercise every morning on the brazen 
horse. Plump down into castles as full of little 
milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows. 
Ail love me dearly at once. — Charming idea of life, 
but too high-colored for the reality. I have out- 
grown all this; my tastes have become exceedingly 
primitive, — almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry hap- 
piness into our condition, but must not hope to find 
it there. I think you will be willing to hear some 
lines which embody the subdued and limited desires 
of my maturity. 

CONTENTMENT. 

" yian wants but little here below." 

Little I ask ; my wants are few ; 
I only wish a but of stone, 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIi: RRKAKFAST-TABLE. CIJ 

(A very plain brown stone will do,) 
That I may call my own ; — 
And close at hand is such a one, 
In yonder street that iVonls the sun. 

Plain food is (juitc enoujih for me ; 

Three coui*ses are as good as ten ; — 
If ^lature can subsist on three, 

Thank Heaven for three. Amen! 
I always thought cold victual nice ; — 
My choice would be vanilla-ice. 

I care not much for gold or land ; — 

Give me a mortirage here and there,— 
Some goo<l bank-stock, — some note ol hai.df 

Or trifling railroad share; — 
I only ask that Fortune send 
A Utile more than I shall spend. 

Honors are silly toys, I know. 

And titles are but empty names; — 
I would, perhaps, be Plcnipo, — 

But only near St J;uncs; — 
I'm verj' sure I should not care 
To fill our (lubernator's chair. 

Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin 

'io care for such unfruitful things ;— 
One good-sized diamond in a pin, — 
Some, not so large, in rings, — 
A ruby, and a pearl, or so, 
"Will do for me ; -I laugh at show. 

My dame should dress in cheap attire ; 
(Good, heavy silks are never dear;)— 
14 



JJ14 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREARiTAST-TABLE 

I own perhaps I nvgld desire 

Some shawls of true cashmere, — 
Some marrowy crapes of China silk, 
Like wnnkled skins on scalded milk. 

I would not have the horse I drive 

So fast that folks nmst stop and stare 
An easy gait — two, forty-five — 

Suits me ; I do not care ; — 
Perhaps, for just a single spurt, 
Some seconds less would do no hurt. 

Of pictures, I should like to own 

Titians and Raphaels three or four. — 
I love so much their style and tone, — 

One Turner, and no more, — 
(A landscape, — foreground golden dirt 
The sunshine painted with a squn't.) 

Of books but few, — some fifty score 

For daily use, and bound for wear; 
The rest upon an upper floor ; — 

Some /iftle luxury there 
Of red morocco's gilded cleam, 
And vellum rich as country cream. 

Busts, catneos, gems, — such things as these. 

AVhich others often show for pride, 
I value for their power to please. 

And selfish churls deride ; — 
One Stradivarius, I confess. 
Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. 

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, 
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool ; — 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIK BREAKFAST-TABLE. 315 

ShaM not carved tables serve my turn. 

But all must be of buhl ? 
Give nrraspIiiiT pomp its double share,— 
I ask but one reeunibeut ciiair. 

Thus bumble let me live and die, 

Nor long for Midas' golden touch, 
If Heaven more generous gifts deny, 

I shall not miss them much, — 
Too grateful for the blessing lent 
Of simple tastes and mind content I 



MY LAST WAI.K WITH THK SCHOOLMISTRESS. 

(A Pai'entliesls.) 

I can't say just how many walks she and I had 
taken together before this one. I found the elTect of 
going out every morning was decidedly favorable on 
her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for 
which were just marked when she came, played, 
shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled 
and nodded good-morning to me from the school- 
house-steps. 

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. 
At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said 
during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I 
fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my 
friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my 
own risk and expense, would be the proper method 
of bringing them before the public. 

I would have a woman as true as Death 



316 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

At the first real lie which works from the heart out- 
ward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a 
better world, where she can have an angel for a 
gpverness, and feed on strange fruits which will 
make her all over again, even to her bones and mar- 
row. — Whether gifted with the accident of beauty 
or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red 
clay of Love, before the breath of life made a mov- 
ing mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congeiiital 
endowment; and I think, after a wliile, one gets to 
know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the 
pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them. — Proud she 
may be, in the sense of respecting herself ; but pride 
in the sense of contemning others less gifted than 
herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar 
woman's Inferno, where the punishments are Small- 
pox and Bankruptcy. — She who nips off the end of 
a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, 
to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and 
kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she comes 
not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. • Con- 
sciousness of unquestioned position makes people 
gracious in proper measure to all ; but if a woman 
puts on airs with her real equals, she has something 
about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or 
ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged 
people, who know family histories, generally see 
through it. An official of standing was rude to me 
once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather, — said a 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TADLE. 3[7 

wise old friend to me, — he was a boor. — Better too 
few words, from the woman we love, than too 
many: while she is silent. Nature is working for her; 
while she talks, she is working for herself. — Love is 
sparingly soluble in the words of men ; therefore they 
speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's 
speech can dissolve more of it tlian a man's heart 
can hold. 

Whether I said any or all of these things 

to the schoolmistress, or not, — whether I stole them 
out of Lord Bacon, — whether I cribbed them from 
Balzac, — whether I dipped them from the ocean of 
Tupperian wisdom, — or whether I have just found 
them in my head, laid there by that solemn fowl, 
Experience, (who, according to my observation, 
cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs,) I can- 
not sav. Wise men have said more foolish thinjrs, 
— and foolish men, I don't doubt, have said as wise 
things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleas- 
ant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel 
bound to report. 

You are a stranger to me. Ma'am. — I don't 

doubt you would like to know all I said to tho 
schoolmistress. — I sha'ii't do it ; — I had rather get 
the publishers to return the money you have invested 
in this. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it 
I shall tell only what I like of what I remember. 

My idea was, in the first place, to search out 

llhe picturesque spots which the city affords a sight 



318 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BUKAKFAST-TABLE. 

of, to those who have eyes. I know a good niary, 
and it was a pleasure to look at them in company 
with my young friend. There were the shrubs and 
flowers in the Franklin- Pi ace front-yards or borders; 
Commerce is just putting his granite foot upon them. 
Then there are certain small seraglio-gardens, into 
which one can get a peep through the crevices of 
high fences, — one in jNIyrtle Street, or backing on it, 
—here and there one at the North and South Ends. 
Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then the 
stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers 
Street, which hold their outspread hands over your 
head, (as I said in my poem the other day,) and look 
as if they were whispering, " May grace, mercy, and 
peace be v/ith you I " — and the rest of that benedic- 
tion. Nay, there are certain patches of ground, 
which, having lain neglected for a time. Nature, who 
always has her pockets full of seeds, and holes in 
all her pockets, has covered with hungry plebeian 
growths, which fight for life with each other, until 
some of them get broad-leaved and succulent, and 
you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphael 
would not have disdained to spread over the fore- 
ground of his masterpiece. The Professor pretends 
that he found such a one in Charles Street, which, 
in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble 
vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of 
the Public Garden as ignominiously as a group of 
voung tatterdemalions playing pitch-and-toss beats a 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIK BRKAKFAST-TABLE. 319 

row of Sunday-school-boys with their teacher at 
their head. 

Bat then the Professor has one of his burrows in 
that region, and puts everything in high colors relat- 
ing to it. That is his way about everything. 

I hold any man cheap, — he said, — of whom nothing 
stronger can be uttered than that all his geese are 

swans. IIow is that. Professor ? — said I ; — I 

should have set you down for one of that sort. 

Sir, — said he, — I am proud to say, that Nature has 
so far enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a 
duck without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever 
swam the basin in the garden of the Luxembourg. 
And the Professor showed the whites of his eyes 
devoutly, like one returning thanks after a dinner of 
many courses. 

I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking 
in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and 
floors of cities. You heap up a million tons of 
hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth which 
was green once. The trees look down from the 
hill-sides and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe, 
— " What are these people about ? " And the small 
herbs at their feet look up and whisper back, — " We 
will go and see." So the small herbs pack them- 
selves up in the least possible bundles, and wait 
until the wind steals to them at night and whispers, 
— " Come with me." Then they go softly with it 
into th(i great city, — one to a cleft in the pavement 



S20 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 

one to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the 
marbles over a rich gentleman's bones, and one to 
the grave without a stone where nothing but a man 
is buried, — and there they grow, looking down on 
the generations of men from mouldy roofs, looking 
up from between the less-trodden pavements, looking 
out through iron cemetery-railings. Listen to them, 
when there is only a light breath stirring, and you 
will hear them saying to each other, — " Wait awhile!" 
The words run along the telegraph of those narrow 
green lines that border the roads leading from the 
city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and the 
'xees repeat in low murmurs to each other, — " Wait 
awhile I " By-and-by the flow of life in the streets 
jbbs, and the old leafy inhabitants — the smaller 
tribes always in front — saunter in, one by one, very 
careless seemingly, but very tenacious, until they 
swarm so that the great stones gape from each other 
with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar 
begins to be picked out of the granite to find them 
food. At last the trees take up their solemn line of 
march, and never rest until they have encamped in 
the market-place. Wait long enough and you will 
find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block 
in its yellow underground arms; that was the corner- 
stone of the State- House. Oh, so patient she is, this 
imperturbable Nature ! 

Let us cry I 

"Put all this has nothing to do with my walks and 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 321 

lalks with the schoolmistress. I did not say that 1 
would not tell you something about them. Let me 
alone, and I shall talk to you more than I ought to, 
probably. We never tell our secrets to people that 
pump for them. 

Books we talked about, and education. It was her 
duty to know something of these, and of course she 
did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than 
she, but I found that the difference between her 
reading and mine was like that of a man^s and a 
woman's dusting a library. The man flaps about 
with a bunch of feathers ; the woman goes to work 
softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, 
nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, — but she 
goes into all the corners, and attends to the leaves 
as much as the covers. — Books are the negative pic- 
tures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind 
that receives their images, the more nicely the finest 
lines are reproduced. A woman, (of the right kind,) 
reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed 
the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the 
finest of the wheat. 

But it was in talking of Life that we came most 
nearly together. I thought I knew something about 
that, — that I could speak or write about it somewhat 
to the purpose. 

To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a 
sponge sucks up water, — to be steeped and soaked 
in its realities as a hide fills its pores lying seven 

14* 



322 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABIE. 

years in a tan-pit, — to have winnowed erery wave 
of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runa 
through the flume upon its float-boards, — to have 
curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened out in 
the laxest languors of this breathing-sickness, which 
keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or 
four score years, — to have fought all the devils and 
clasped all the angels of its delirium, — and then, just 
at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled 
down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the 
ice-cold stream of some human language or other, 
one might think would end in a rhapsody with 
something of spring and temper in it. All this I 
thought my power and province. 

The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a 
while one meets with a single soul greater than all 
the living pageant which passes before it. As the pale 
astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and 
thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a 
balance, so there are meek, slight women who have 
weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and 
hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender 
hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left 
her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine oi labor 
and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life were 
before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, 
gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was often 
sprightly, as she became interested in the various 
matters we talked about and places we visited, I save 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIL BKEAKFAST-TABLE, o.y^ 

that eye and lip and every shifting lineament \v ore 
made for love, — unconscious of their sweet otiice aa 
yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the 
natural graces which were meant for the reward of 
nothing less than the Great Passion. 

1 never addressed one word of love to the 

schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks. 
It seemed to me that we talked of everything but 
love on that particular morning. There was, per- 
haps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my 
part than I have commonly shown among our people 
at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself 
the master at the breakfast-table ; but, somehow, I 
could not command myself just then so well as 
usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to 
Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at 
noon, — with the condition, however, of being re- 
leased in case circumstances occurred to detain me. 
The schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, of 
course, as yet. 

It was on the Common that we were walking. 
The 7nal/j or boulevard of our Common, you know, 
has various branches leading from it in diflerent 
directions. One of these runs down from opposite 
Joy Street southward across the whole length of the 
Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long 
path, and were fond of it. 

I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably 
obust habit) as we came opposite the head of thi? 



321 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

path on that morning. I think I tried to speak tsvice 
without making myself distinctly audible. At last 

I got out the question,' Will you take the long 

path with me? Certainly, — said the schoolmis- 
tress, — with much pleasure. Think, — I said, — 

before you answer; if you take the long path with 
me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no 

morel The schoolmistress stepped back with a 

sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. 

One of the long granite blocks used as seats wad 
hard by, — the one you may still see close by the 

Gingko-trce. l^ray, sit down, — I said. No, 'iO, 

she answered, softly, — I will walk the lon^ path with 
you ! 

The old gentleman who sits opposite me', us 



walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the lung 
path, and said, very charmingly, — " Good morning, 
my dears ! " 



XIT. 
[I DID not think it probable that I should have a 
great many more talks with our company, and there- 
fore I was anxious to get as much as I could into every 
conversation. That is the reason why you will find 
some odd, miscellaneous facts here, which I wished 
to tell at least once, as I should not have a chance to 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAULK. 323 

tell them habitually, at our break fast-tiiblo. — We're 
very free and easy, you know ; we don't read what 
we don't like. Our parish is so large, one can't pre- 
tend to preach to all the pews at once. One can't 
be all the time trying to do the best of one's best 
if a company works a steam fire-engine, the firemen 
needn't be straining themselves all day to squirt over 
the top of the flagstaff. Let them wash some of 
those lower-story windows a little. Besides, there is 
no use in our quarrelling now, as you will fiiul out 
when you get through this paper.] 

Travel, according to my experience, does not 

exactly correspond to the idea one gets of it out of 
most books of travels. I am thinking of travel as 
it was when I made the Grand Tour, especially in 
Italy. Memory is a net; one fmds it full of fish 
when he takes it from the brook; but a dozen miles 
of water have run through it without sticking. I 
can prove some facts about travelling by a story or 
two. There are certain principles to be assumed, — 
such as these : — He who is carried by hor^^s must 
deal with rogues. — To-day's dinner subtends a larger 
visual angle than yesterday's revolution. A mote ir 
my eye is bigger to me than the biggest of Ur. 
Gould's private planets.— -Every traveller is a self- 
taught entomologist. — Old jokes are dynamometers 
of mental tension ; an old joke tells better among 
friends travelling than at home, — which shows that 
their minds are in a state of diminished, rather than 



;]2G THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

increased vitality. There was a story about " stralipa 
to your pahntb," which was vastly fanny to us fel 
lows — on the road from Milan to Venice. — Cwlum^ 
non animuniy — travellers change their guineas, but 
not their characters. The bore is the same, eating 
dates under the cedars of Lebanon, as over a plate 
of baked beans in Beacon Street. — Parties of travel- 
lers have a morbid instinct for "establishing raws" 
upon each other. — A man shall sit down with hia 
friend at the foot of the Great Pyramid and they will 
take up the question they had been talking about 
under " the great elm," and forget all about Egypt. 
When I was crossing the Po, we were all fighting 
about the propriety of one fellow's telling another 
that his argument was absurd; one maintaining it to 
be a perfectly admissible logical term, as proved by 
the phrase " reductio ad absurdum ; " the rest bad- 
gering him as a conversational bully. Mighty little 
we troubled ourselves for Patlus, the Po, *' a river 
broader and more rapid than the Rhone," and the 
times when Hannibal led his grim Africans to its 
banks, and his elephants thrust their tiunks into 
the yellow waters over which that pendulum ferry- 
boat was swinging back and forward every ten 
minutes ! 

Here are some of those reminiscences, with 

morals prefixed, or annexed, or impUed. 

Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us 
fulJ in front, but obliquely from the side; a scene oi 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE ^27 

incident in undress often afTects us more than one in 
full costume. 

" Is this the mighty ocean ? — is tliis all ? " 

says the Princess in Gcbir. The rush that should 
have flooded my soul in the Coliseum did not come. 
But walking one day in the fields about the city, J 
stumbled over a fragment of broken masonry, and lo ! 
the World's Mistress in her stone girdle — alia mwnia 
Rumas — rose before me and whitened my chei-k with 
her |)ale shadow as never before or since. 

I used very often, when coming home from my 
morning's work at one of the public institutions of 
Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of St. Kti- 
enne du Mont. The tomb of St, Genevieve, sur- 
rounded by burning candles and votive tablets, was 
there; the mural tablet of Jacobus Benignus Wins- 
low was there ; there was a noble organ with carved 
figures; the pulpit was borne on the oaken shoulders 
of a stooping Samson ; and there was a marvellous 
staircase like a coil of lace. These things I mention 
from memory, but not all of them together impressed 
me so much as an inscription on a small slab of 
marble fixed in one of the walls. It told how this 
church of St. Stephen was repaired and beautified in 
the year 16**, and how, during the celebration of its 
reopening, two girls of the parish (filles de la paroisse) 
fell from the gallery, carrying a part of the balustrade 
with them, to the pavement, but by a miracle es- 
caped uninjured. Two young girls, nameless, but 



328 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

rea' presences to my imagination, as much as when 
Uiey came fluttering down on the tiles with a cry 
(hat outscreamed the sharpest treble in the Te Deum 
(Look at Carlyle's article on Boswell, and see how 
he speaks of the poor young woman Johnson talked 
with in the streets one evening.) All the crowd 
gone but these two " filles de la paroisse," — gone 
as utterly as the dresses they wore, as the shoes 
that were on their feet, as the bread and meat that 
were in the market on that day. 

Not the great historical events, but the personal 
incidents that call up single sharp pictures of some 
human being in its pang or struggle, reach us most 
nearly. I remember the platform at Berne, over the 
parapet of which Theobald Weinziipfli's restive horse 
sprung with him and landed him more than a hun- 
dred feet beneatli in the lower town, not dead, but 
sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's 
servant from that day forward. I have forgotten the 
famous bears, and all else. — I remember the Percy 
lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick, — 
the leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight 
like a pump-handle, — and why ? Because of the 
story of the village boy who must fain bestride the 
leaden tail, standing out over the water, — which 
breaking, he dropped into the stream far below, 
and was taken out an idiot for the rest of his life 

Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point, 
and the guillotine-axe must have a slanting^ edge. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE IRKAICrAST-TARLK. 329 

Something intensely human, narrow, and definite 
pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily 
than huge occurrences and catastrophes. A nail 
will pick a lock that defies hatchet and hammer. 
" The Royal George" went down with all her crew, 
and Cowper wrote an exquisitely simple poem about 
it ; but the leaf which holds it is smooth, while that 
which bears the lines on his mother's portrait ia 
blistered with tears. 

My telling these recollections sets nie thinking of 
others of the same kind which strike the imagination, 
especially when one is still young. You remember 
the monument in Devizes market to the woman 
struck dead with a lie in her moutli. 1 never saw 
that, but it is in the books. Here is one I never 
heard mentioned; — if any of the *' Note and Query" 
tribe can tell the story, I iiope they will. Where is 
this monument ? I was riding on an English stage- 
coach when we passed a handsome marble column 
(as I remember it) of considerable size and preten- 
sions. — What is that? — I said. — That, — answered 
the coachman, — is the hangmmCs pillar. Then he 
told me how a man went out one night, many years 
ago, to steal sheep. He caught one, tied its legs 
together, passed the rope over his head, and started 
for home. In climbing a fence, the rope slipped, 
caught him by the neck, and strangled him. Next 
morning he was found hanging dead on one side of 
tbfe f^thce and the sheep on the other ; in memory 



530 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

whereof the lord of the manor caused this monu- 
ment to be erected as a warning to all who love 
mutton better than virtue. I will send a copy of 
this record to him or her who shall first set me right 
about this column and its locality. 

And tellinc: over these old stories reminds me that 
I have something which may interest architects and 
perhaps some other persons. I once ascended the 
spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, 
I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree- 
work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his 
arms behind you to keep you from falling. To 
climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to think of 
having climbed it crisps all the fifty-sLx joints of 
one's twenty digits. While I was on it, " pinnacled 
dim in the intense inane," a strong wind was blow- 
ing, and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. It 
swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye or a 
cat-o'nine-tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I 
mentioned it to the guide, and he said that the spire 
did really swing back and forward, — I think he said 
some feet. 

Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some 
other line will intersect it. Long afterwards I was 
hunting out a paper of Dumeril's in an old journal, 
— the " Magazin Encyclopidique " for ran troisieme, 
(1795,) when I stumbled upon a brief article on the 
vibrations of the spire of Strasburg Cathedral. A 
man can shake it so that the movement shall be 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAIvEAST-TABLE. 33^ 

Bhown in a vessel of water nearly seventy feet below 
the summit, and higher up the vibration is like that 
of an earthquake. I have seen one of those WTetched 
wooden spires with which we very shabbily finish 
some of our stone churches (thinking that the lidles3 
blue eye of heaven cannot tell the counterfeit we 
try to pass on it,) swinging like a reed, in a wind, 
but one would hardly think of such a thing's hap- 
pening in a stone spire. Does the Bunker-IIill Mon- 
ument bend in the blast like a blade of grass ? I 
suppose so. 

You see, of course, that I am talking in a cheap 
way; — perhaps we will have some philosophy by 
and by ; — let me work out this thin mechanical vein. 
— I have something more to say about trees. I have 
brought down this slice of hemlock to show you. 
Tree blew down in my woods (that were) in 1852. 
Twelve feet and a half round, fair girth ; — nine feet, 
where I got my section, higher up. This is a wedge, 
going to the centre, of the general shape of a slice 
of apple-pie in a large and not opulent family 
Length, about eighteen inches. I have studied the 
growth of this tree by its rings, and it is curious. 
Three hundred and forty-two rings. Started, there- 
fore, about 1510. The thickness of the rings tells 
the rate at which it grew. For five or six years the 
rate was slow, — then rapid for twenty years. A 
little before the year 1550 it began to grow very 
slowly, and so continued for about seventy years. In 



332 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLt. 

1620 it took a new start and grew fast until 1714 
then for the most part slowly until 1786, when it 
started again and grew pretty well and uniformly 
until within the last dozen years, when it seems to 
have got on sluggishly. 

Look here. Here are some human lives laid down 
against the periods of its growth, to which they cor- 
responded. This is Shakspeare's. The tree was 
seven inches in diameter when he was born ; ten 
inches when he died. A little less than ten inches 
when Milton was born ; seventeen when he died. 
Then comes a long interval, and this thread marks 
out Johnson's life, during which the tree increased 
from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. 
Here is the span of Napoleon's career; — the tree 
doesn't seem to have minded it. 

I never saw the man yet who was not startled at 
looking on this section. I have seen many wooden 
preachers, — never one like this. How much more 
striking would be the calendar counted on the rings 
of one of those awful trees which were standing 
when Christ was on earth, and where that brief mor- 
tal life is chronicled with the stolid apathy of vege- 
table being, which remembers all human history as 
a thing of yesterday in its own dateless existence ! 

I have something more to say about elms. A 
relative tells me there is one of great glory in Ando- 
ver, near Bradford. I have some recollections of the 
former place, pleasant and other. [I wonder if the 



THE AUTOCRAT UF THE BREAKFAS T-TAHLP:. 333 

old Seminary clock strikes as slowly as it used to. 
jMy room-mate thought, when he first came, it was 
the bell tolling deaths, and people's ages, as they do 
in the country. He swore — (ministers' sons get so 
familiar with good words that they are apt to handle 
them carelessly) — that the children were dying by 
the dozen, of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran 
off next day in recess, when it began to strike eleven, 
but was caught before the clock got through strik- 
ing.] At the foot of "the hill," down in town, is, or 
was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been 
hooped with iron to protect it from Indian toma- 
hawks, ( Cre^/a/ Hahncmannus^) and to have grown 
round its hoops and buried them in its wood. Of 
course, this is not the tree my relative means. 

Also, I have a very pretty letter from Norwich, in 
Connecticut, telling me of two noble elms which 
are to be seen in that town. One hundred and 
twenty-seven feet from bough-end to bough-end ! 
What do you say to that? And gentle ladies be- 
neath it, that love it and celebrate its praises ! And 
that in a town of such supreme, audacious, Alpine 
loveliness as Norwich I — On|y the dear people there 
must learn to call it Norridge, and not be misled by 
the mere accident of spelling. 

^OTwicli. 

Port/f mouth. 

Cincinnata/f. 
What a sad picture of our civilization I 



334 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

I did not speak to you of the great tree on what 
used to be the Colman farm, in Deerfield, simply 
because I had not seen it for many years, and did 
not like to trust my recollection. But I had it in 
memory, and even noted down, as one of the finest 
trees in symmetry and beauty I had ever seen. I 
have received a document, signed by two citizens of 
a neighboring tow^n, certified by the postmaster and 
a selectman, and these again corroborated, reinforced, 
and sworn to by a member of that extraordinary col- 
lege-class to which it is the good fortune of my friend 
the Professor to belong, who, though he has former Ii/ 
been a member of Congress, is, I believe, fully worthy 
of confidence. The tree " girts " eighteen and a 
half feet, and spreads over a hundred, and is a real 
beauty. I hope to meet my friend under its branches 
yet ; if we don't have " youth at the prow," we wixi 
have " pleasure at the 'elm." 

And just now, again, I have got a letter about 
some grand willows in Maine, and another about an 
elm in Wayland, but too late for anything but 
thanks. 

[And this leads me to say, that I have received a 
great many communications, in prose and verse 
since t began printing these notes. The last came 
this very morning, in the shape of a neat and brief 
poem, from New Orleans. I could not make any of 
them public, though sometimes requested to do so 
Some of them have given me great pleasure, and 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKKAKFAST-TABLE. 



335 



encouraged me to believe I had friends whose faces 
I had never seen. If you are pleased with anything 
a writer says, and doubt whether to tell him of it, do 
not hesitate ; a pleasant word is a cordial to one, who 
perhaps thinks he is tiring you, and so becomes tired 
himself. I purr very loud over a good, honest letter 
that says pretty things to me.] 

— — Sometimes very young persons send commu- 
nications which they want forwarded to editors; and 
these young persons do not always seem to have 
right conceptions of these same editors, and of the 
public, and of themselves. Here is a letter I wrote 
to one of these young folks, but, on the whole, 
thought it best not to send. It is not fair to sin<de 
out one for such sharp advice, where there are hun- 
dreds that are in need of it. 

-Dear Sir, — You seem to be somewhat, but not a 
great deal, wiser than I was at your age. I don't 
wish to be understood as saying too much, for I 
think, without committing myself to any opinion on 
my present state, that I was not a Solomon at that 
stage of development. 

You long to « leap at a single bound into celeb- 
rity." Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be 
remarkable. Fame usually comes to those who are 
thinking about something else, — very rarely to those 
who say to themselves, " Go to, now, let us be a 
celebrated individual!" The struggl'3 for fame, as 



33f> THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

su\.-.li, commonly ends in notoriety ; — that ladder is 
easy to climb, but it leads to the pillory which is 
crowded with fools who could not hold their tonguea 
and rogues who could not hide their tricks. 

If you have the consciousness of genius, do some- 
thin^ to show it. The world is pretty quick, nowa- 
days, to catch the flavor of true originality ; if you 
write anything remarkable, the magazines and news- 
papers will find you out, as the school-boys find out 
where the ripe apples and pears are. Produce any- 
thing really good, and an intelligent editor will jump 
at it. Don't flatter yourself that any article of yours 
is rejected because you are unknown to fame. Noth- 
ing pleases an editor more than to get anything 
worth having from a new hand. There is always a 
dearth of really fine articles for a first-rate journal; 
for, of a hundred pieces received, ninety are at or 
below the sea-level; some have water enough, but 
no head; some head enough, but no water; onl) 
two or three are from full reservoirs, high up that hill 
which is so hard to climb. 

You may have genius. The contrary is of course 
probable, but it is not demonstrated. If you have, 
the world wants you more than you want it. It has 
not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of 
genius that shows itself among us ; there is not a 
bull-calf in our national pasture that can bleat a 
ihyme but it is ten to one, among his friends, and 
no takers, that he is the real, genuine, no-mistake 
Osiris. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 337 

Qii^est ce quHl a fait ? What has he done ? That 
was Napoleon's test. What have you done? Turn 
up the faces of your picture-cards, my boy ! You 
need not make mouths at the public because it has 
not accepted you at your own fancy-valuation. Do 
the prettiest thing you can and wait your time. 

For the verses you send me, I will not say they 
are hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show 
promise. I am not an editor, but I know the stand- 
ard of some editors. You must not expect to " leap 
with a single bound " into the society of those 
whom it is not flattery to call your betters. When 
*' The Pactolian " has paid you for a copy of verses, 
—(I can furnish you a list of alliterative signatures, 
beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe 
Zenith,) — when " The Rag-bag " has stolen your 
piece, after carefully scratching your name out, — 
when " The Nut-cracker " has thought you worth 
shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest 
poem, — then, and not till then, you may consifler 
the presumption against you, from the fact of your 
rhyming tendency, as called in question, and let 
our friends hear from you, if you think it worth 
while. You may possibly think me too candid, and 
even accuse me of incivility ; but let me assure you 
that I am not half so plain-spoken as Nature, nor 
half so rude as Time. K you prefer the long jolting 
of public opinion to the gentle -touch of friendship, 

try it like a man. Only remember this,— that, if a 

15 r 



338 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

bushi.'l of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart with- 
out springs to it, the small potatoes always get to 
the bottom. Believe me, etc., etc. 

I always think of verse-writers, when I am in this 
vein ; for these are by far the most exacting, eager, 
self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreasonable liter- 
ary persons one is like to meet with. Is a young 
man in the habit of writing verses ? Then the pre- 
sumption is that he is an inferior person. For, look 
you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he 
writes poor verses. Now the habit of chewing on 
rhymes without sense and soul to match them is, 
like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof 
of feebleness and a debilitating agent. A young man 
can get rid of the presumption against him afforded 
by his writing verses only by convincing us that 
they are verses worth writing. 

All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, it is 
not addressed to any individual, and of course does 
not refer to any reader of these pages. I would 
always treat any given young person passing through 
the meteoric showers which rain down on the brief 
period of adolescence with great tenderness. God 
forgive us if we ever speak harshly to young crea- 
tures on the strength of these ugly truths, and so, 
sooner or later, smite some tender-souled poet of 
poetess on the lips who might have sung the world 
into sweet trances, had we not silenced the matin- 



TIIK AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 339 

song in its first low breathings I Just as my heart 
yearns over the unloved, just so it sorrows for the 
ungifted who are doomed to the pangs of an un« 
deceived self-estimate. I have always tried to he 
gentle with the most hopeless cases. My experience, 
however, has not been encouraging. 

X. Y., eet. 18, a cheaply-got-up youth, with 

narrow jaws, and broad, bony, cold, red hands, 
having been laughed at by the girls in his village, 
and "got the mitten" (pronounced mittin) two or 
three times, falls to souling and controlling, and 
youthing and truthing, in the newspapers. Sends 
me some strings of verses, candidates for the Ortho- 
pedic Infirmary, all of them, in which I learn for the 
millionth time one of the following facts : either 
that something about a chime is sublime, or that 
something about time is sublime, or that something 
about a chime is concerned with time, or that some- 
thing about a rhyme is sublime or concerned with 
time or with a chime. Wishes my opinion of the 
same, with advice as to his future course. 

What shall I do about it ? Tell him the whole 
truth, and send him a ticket of admission to the 
Institution for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth ? 
One doesn't like to be cruel, — and yet one hates to 
lie. Therefore one softens down the ugly central 
fact of donkeyism, — recommends study of good 
models, — that \witing verse should be an incidental 
occupation only, not interfering with the hoe, tho 



3.40 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

needle, the lapstone, or the ledger, — and, above all 
that there should be no hurry in printing what is 
written. Not the least use in all this. The poetaster 
who has tasted type is done for. He is like the man 
who has once been a candidate for the Presidency. 
He feeds on the madder of his delusion all his days, 
and his very bones grow red with the glow of his 
foolish fancy. One of these young brains is like a 
bunch of India crackers ; once touch fire to it and it 
is best to keep hands off until it has done popping, — 
if it ever stops. I have two letters on file ; one is a 
pattern of adulation, the other of impertinence. My 
reply to the first, containing the best advice I could 
give, conveyed in courteous language, had brought 
out the second. There was some sport in this, but 
Dulness is not commonly a game fish, and only 
sulks after he is struck. You may set it down as a 
truth which admits of few exceptions, that those 
who ask your opinion really want your praise^ and 
will be contented with nothina: less. 

There is another kind of application to which 
editors, or those supposed to have access to them, 
are liable, and which often proves trying and painful. 
One is appealed to in behalf of some person in 
needy circumstances who wishes to make a living 
by the pen. A manuscript accompanying the letter 
is offered for publication. It is not commonly bril- 
liant, too often lamentably deficient. If Rachel's 
Baying is true, that " fortune is the measure of Intel- 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 34| 

figence," then poverty is evidence of limited capacity 
which it too frequently proves to be, notwithstand- 
ing a noble exception here and there. Now an 
editor is a person under a contract with the public 
to furnish them with the best things he can alTord 
for his money. Charity shown by the publication 
of an inferior article would be like Ihe generosity 
of Claude Duval and the other gentlemen highway- 
men, who pitied the poor so much they robbed the 
rich to have the means of relieving them. 

Though I am not and never was an editor, I know- 
something of the trials to which they are submitted. 
They have nothing to do but to develope enormous 
calluses at every point of contact with authorship. 
Their business is not a matter of sympathy, but of 
intellect They must reject the unfit productions 
of those whom they long to befriend, because it 
would be a profligate charity to accept them. One 
cannot burn his house down to warm the hands even 
of the fatherless and the widow. 



THE PROFESSOR UNDER CHLOROFORM. 

•You haven't heard about my friend the Pro- 



fessor's first experiment in the use of anaesthetics, 
have you? 

He was mightily pleased with the reception of 
that poem of his about the chaise. He spoke to me 



312 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

once or twice about another poem of similar charac* 
ter he wanted to read me, which I told him I woula 
listen to and criticize. 

One day, after dinner, he came in with his face 
tied up, looking very red in the cheeks and heavy 
about the eyes. — Hy'r'ye ? — he said, and made for 
an arm-chair, in which he placed first his hat and 
then his person, going smack through the crown of 
the former as neatly as they do the trick at the 
circus. The Professor jumped at the explosion as 
if he had sat down on one of those small calthrops 
our grandfathers used to sow round in the grass 
when there were Indians about, — iron stars, each ray 
a rusty thorn an inch and a half long, — stick through 
moccasins into feet, — cripple 'em on the spot, and 
give 'em lockjaw in a day or two. 

At the same time he let off one of those big words 
which lie at the bottom of the best man's vocabu- 
lary, but perhaps never turn up in his life, — just 
as every man's hair may stand on end, but in most 
men it never does. 

After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet or two 
of manuscript, together with a smaller scrap, on which, 
as he said, he had just been writing an introduction 
or prelude to the main performance. A certain sus- 
picion had come into my mind that the Professor 
was not quite right, which was confirmed by the 
way he talked; but I let him begin. This is the 
vvay he read it: — 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 343 

Prelude. 

1 M the fellah that tole one day 
The tale of the won'erful one-hos5-shay. 
Wan* to hear another ? Say. 
— Funnv, wasn'it ? Alade me lau^h, — 
I'm too modest, I ara» by half, — 
Made me laugh *« though 1 sh'd splits — 
Cahn* a fellah like fellah's own wit ? 
— Fellahs keep savin*, — '* Well, now that's mc« ; 
Did it once, but cahn* do it twice." — 
Don* you b'lieve the'z no more fat ; 
Lots in the kitch'n 'z good 'z that. 
Fus'-rate throw, 'n* no mistake, — 
Han' us the props for another shake ; — 
Know I'll try, *n' guess I'll win; 
Here sh' goes for hit *m ag'in ! 

Here I thought it necessary to interpose. — Pro- 
fessor, — I said, — you are inebriated. The style of 
what you call your " Prelude " shows that it was 
written under cerebral excitement Your articulation 
is confused. You have told me three times in suc- 
cession, in exactly the same words, that I was the 
only true friend you had in the world that you would 
unbutton your heart to. You smell distinctly and 
decidedly of spirits. — I spoke, and paused ; tender, 
but firm. 

Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the 
Professor's lids, — in obedience to the principle of 
gravitation celebrated in that delicious bit of blad- 
dery bathos, " The very law that moulds a tear," 



344 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAB'^.E. 

with which the " Edinburgh Revi^-w " a^-i;emptecl 
to put down Master George Gordon when that 
young man was foolishly trying to make himself 
conspicuous. 

One of these tears peeped o» er the edge of the lid 
until it lost its balance, — slid d^i iach and waited for 
reinforcements, — swelled agu'r, — rolled do^'n a little 
further, — stopped, — moved o\i, — and at last fell on 
the back of the Professoi's band. He held it up for 
me to look at, and lifted his eyeo, brimlul, till they 
met mine. 

I couldn't stand it, — I alv/ays break down when 
folks cry in my face, — so I hugged him, and said he 
was a dear old boy, and aaked him kindly what was 
the matter with him, and what made him smell so 
dreadfully strong of spirits. 

Upset his alcohol lamp, — he said, — and spilt the 
alcohol on his legs. That was it. — But what had he 
been doing to get his head into such a state ? — had 
he really committed an excess? What was the 
matter? — Then it came out that he had been taking 
chloroform to have a tooth out, which had left him 
in a very queer state, in which he had written the 
" Prelude " given above, and under the influeuce of 
which he evidently was still. 

I took the manuscript from his hands and read 
the following continuation of the lines he had begun 
to read me, while he made up for two or three nights* 
lost sleep as he best might. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 345 
PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY: 

OR, THE president's OLD ARM-CHAIR. 

A MATHSMATICAL STORT. • 

Facts respecting an old arm-chair. 
At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there. 
Seems but little the worse for wear. 
That's remarkable when I say 
It was old in President Ilolyoke's day. 
(One of his boys, perhaps you know, 
Died, at one hundred, years ago.) 
He took lodging for rain or shine 
Under gi-een bed-clothes in '69. 

Know old Cambridge ? Hope you do. — 
Born there ? Don't say so I I was, too. 
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, — 
Standing still, if you must have proof. — 
" (lainbrel ? — Gambrcl V " — Let me beg 
You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, — 
First great angle above the hoof, — 
That's the gambrel ; hence gambrel-roof.) 
— Nicest place that ever was seen, — 
Colleges red and Common green. 
Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 
Sweetest spot beneath the skies 
When the canker-worms don't rise, — 
When the dust, that sometimes flies 
Into your mouth and ears and eyes. 
In a quiet slumber lies, 
Not in the shape of unbaked pies 
Such as barefoot children prize. 

A kind of harbor it seems to be, 

Facing the flow of a boundless sea. 
15* 



546 inE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TADLE. 

Rows of gray old Tutors stand 
Ranged like rocks above the sand ; 
Rolling beneath them, soft and green, 
•• Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, — 

One wave, two waves, three waves, four, 

Sliding up the sparkling floor ; 

Then it ebbs to flow no more. 

Wandering ofl* from shore to shore 

With its freigiit of golden ore I 

— Pleasant place ibr boys to play ; — 

Better keep your girls away ; 

Hearts get rolled as pebbles do 

Which countless fingering waves pursue, 

And every classic beach is strown 

"NV'ilh heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone. 

But this is neither here nor there ; — 
I'm talking about an old arm-chair. 
You've heard, no doubt, of Parson Turell ? 
Over at Medford he used to dwell; 
Married one of the Mathers' Iblk ; 
Got with his wife a chair of oak, — 
Funny old chair, with seat like wedge. 
Sharp behind and broad front edge, — 
One of the oddest of human things, 
Turned all over with knobs and rinjrs, — 
But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand, — 
Fit for the worthies of the land, — 
Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in, 
Or Cotton Mather to sit — and lie — in. 
— Parson Turell bequeathed the same 
To a certain student, — Smith by name; 
These were the terms, as we are told : 
" Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde i 



THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIK BREAKFAST-TABLE. 347 

"When he doth graduate, then to passe 

To ye oldest Youth in y® Senior Classe. 

On Pa^nnent of" — (namin^r a certain sum) — 

" By hiui to whom y*-' Chaire shall come ; 

He to ye oldest Senior next, 

And soe forever," — (thus runs the text,) — 

'* But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime, 

That being his Debte for use of same.** 

Smith transferred it to one of the BuowNS, 
And took his money, — five silver crowns. 
Brown delivered it up to Mooke, 
Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four. 
Moore made over the chair to Lee, 
Who gave him crowns of silver three. 
Lee convoyed it unto Duew, 
And now the pjiyment, of course, was two. 
Drew gave up the chair to Dunn, — 
All he got, as you sec, was one. 
Dunn released the chair to Hall, 
And got by the bargain no crown at all. 
— And now it passed to a second Buown, 
Who took it, and likewise claimed a crown. 
When Brown conveyed it unto Ware, 
Having had one crown, to make it fair, 
He paid hira two crowns to take the chair ; 
And Ware, being honest, (as all Wares be,) 
He paid one Potter, who took it, three. 
Four got Robinson ; five got Dix ; 
Johnson primus demanded six ; 
And so the sum kept gathering still 
Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill 
— When paper money became so cheap, 
Folks wouldn't count it, but said '* a heap,** 



348 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

A certain Richards, the books declare, 

(A. M. in '90 ? I've looked with care 

Through the Triennial, — name not there.) 

This pei-son, Richards, was offered then 

Eight score pounds, but would have ten ; 

Nine, I think, was the sum he took, — 

Not quite certain, — but see the book. 

— By and by the wars were still, 

But nothing had altered the Parson's wiU. 

The old arm-chair was solid yet. 

But saddled with such a monstrous debt I 

Things grew quite too bad to bear. 

Paying such sums to get rid of the chair I 

But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, 

And there was the will in black and white. 

Plain enough for a child to spell. 

What should be done no man could tell, 

For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse. 

And every season but made it worse. 

As a last resort, to clear the doubt, 
Tliey got old Governor Hancock out 
The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop 
And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop ; 
Halberds glittered and colors flew, 
French horns whinnied and trumpets blew. 
The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth 
And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath ; 
So he rode with all his band. 
Till the President met him, cap in hand. 
— The Governor " hefted " the crowns, and said,— • 
" A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." 
The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, — 
" There is your p'int. And here's my fee. 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3.49 

These are the terms you must fulfil, — 

On such conditions I bkhak the will ! " 

The Governor mentionetl what these should be. 

(Just wait a minute aud then you'll see.) 

The President prayed. Then all was still, 

Aud the Governor rose and broke the will I 

— " About those conditions ? " Well, now you go 

And do as I tell you, and then you'll know. 

Once a year, on CommencL'mcnt-day, 

If you'll only tike the pains to stay, 

You'll see the President in the Chair, 

Likewise the Governor sitting thei-e. 

The President rises ; both old aud young 

^lay hear his speech in a foreign tonpjue, 

The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear, 

Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair 'i 

And then his Excellency bows, 

As much as to say that he allows. 

The Vice-Gub. ne.xt is called by name ; 

He bows like t'other, which means the same. 

And all the ofTicers round 'em bow, 

As much as to say that they allow. 

And a lot of parchments about the chair 

Are handed to witnesses then and there, 

And then the lawyers hold it clear 

That the chair is safe for another year. 

God bless you, Gentlemen ! Learn to give 
Money to colleges while you live. 
Don't be silly and think you'll try 
To bother the colleges, when you die, 
With codicil this, and codicil that, 
That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat ; 
For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill, 
And there's always a flaw in a donkey's will ! 



350 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Hospitality is a good deal a matter of lati- 
tude, I suspect. The shade of a palm-tree serves 
an African for a hut ; his dwelling is all door and no 
walls ; everybody can come in. To make a morning 
call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep 
through a long tunnel ; his house is all walls and no 
door, except such a one as an apple with a worm- 
hole has. One might, very probably, trace a regular 
gradation between these two extremes. In cities 
where the evenings are generally hot, the people 
have porches at their doors, where they sit, and this 
is^ of course, a provocative to the interchange of 
civilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is 
ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs really to 
mean temperature. 

Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at 
noon, in a very hot summer's day, one may realize, 
by a sudden extension in his sphere of conscious- 
ness, how closely he is shut up for the most part. — 
Do you not remember something like this ? July, 
between 1 and 2, p. m., Fahrenheit 96°, or there- 
about. Windows all gaping, like the mouths of 
panting dogs. Long, stinging cry of a locust comes 
in from a tree, half a mile ofl ; had forgotten there 
was such a tree. Baby's screams from a house sev- 
eral blocks distant ; — never knew there were any 
babies in the neighborhood before. Tinman pound- 
ing something that clatters dreadfully, — very distinct, 
but don't remember any tinman's shop near by. 



THE AUTOCRAT Ol- THE BREAKFAST-TARLE. 351 

MorsfS stamping on pavement to get off fliea 
When you hear tliese four sounds, you may set i< 
down as a warm day. Then it is that one would 
like to imitate the mode of life of the native at 
Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it : stroll 
into the market in natural costume, — buy a water- 
melon for a halfpenny, — split it, and scoop out the 
middle, — sit down in on(^ half of the empty rind, 
clap the other on one's head, and feast upon the 
pulp. 

1 see some of the London journals have been 

attacking some of their literary people for lecturing, 
on the ground of its being a public exhibition ol 
themselves for money. A popular author can print 
his lecture ; if he deliver it, it is a case of quasturn 
corpore, or making profit of his person. None but 
" snobs " do that. Ergo^ etc. To this I reply,— 
Negatur minor. Her Most Gracious Majesty, the 
Queen, exhibits herself to the public as a part of the 
service for which she is paid. We do not consider 
it low-bred in her to pronounce her own speech, and 
shoald prefer it so to hearing it from any other per- 
son, or reading it. His Grace and his Lordship 
exhibit themselves very often for popularity, and 
their houses every day for money. — No, if a man 
shows himself other than he is, if he belittles him- 
self before an audience for hire, then he acts unwor-* 
thily. But a true word, fresh from the lips of a true 
man, is worth paying for, at the rate of eight dollars 



352 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

a day, or even of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt 
must be an outbreak of jealousy against the re- 
nowned authors who have the audacity to be also 
orators. The sub-lieutenants (of the press) stick a 
too popular writer and speaker with an epithet in 
England, instead of with a rapier, as in France. — ■ 
Poh ! All England is one great menagerie, and, all 
at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage of 
the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity 
of the talking-bird's and the nightingale's being 
willing to become a part of the exhibition ! 

THE LONG PATH. 

(Last of the Parentheses.) 

Yes, that was my last walk with the school' 
mistress. It happened to be the end of a term ; and 
before the next began, a very nice young woman, 
who had been her assistant, was announced as her 
successor, and she was provided for elsewhere. So 
it was no longer the schoolmistress that I walked 

with, but Let us not be in unseemly haste. I 

shall call her the schoolmistress still ; some of you 
love her under that name. 

When it became known among the boarders 

that two of their number had joined hands to walk 
down the long path of life side by side, there was, 
as you may suppose, no small sensation. I confess 
T pitied our landlady. It took h '»r all of a suddin, — 



THE AUIOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 353 

she said. Had not known that we was keepin 
company, and never mistrusted anything partic'lar. 
Ma'am was right to better herself. Didn't look very 
rugged to take care of a femily, but could get hired 
haiilp, she calc'lated. — The great maternal instinct 
came crowding up in her soul just then, and her 
eyes wandered until they settled on her daughter. 

No, poor, dear woman, — that could not have 

been. But I am dropping one of my internal tears 
for you, with this pleasant smile on my face all the 
time. 

The great mystery of God's providence is the per- 
mitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is 
maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sen-/ 
timents. In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties 
there is hardly anything quite so painful to think ol 
as that experiment of putting an animal under the 
bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it. 
[I never saw the accursed trick performed. Laus 
Deo!] There comes a time when the souls of hu- 
man beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, 
begin to faint for the atmosphere of the affections 
they were made to breathe. Then it is that Society 
places its transparent bell-glass over the young 
woman who is to be the subject of one of its fatal 
experiments. The element by which only the heart 
lives is sucked out of her crystalline prison. Watch 
her through its transparent walls ; — her bosom is 
heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, 



354 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in 
the " Book of Martyrs." The " dry-pan and the 
gradual fire " were the images that frightened hei 
most. How many have withered and wasted under 
as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisi- 
tion which .we call Civilization! 

Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you fool- 
ish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, 
self-saturated young person, whoever you may be, 
now reading this, — little thinking you are what I 
describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you 
are destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul which 
is the lot of such multitudes worthier than yourself. 
But it is only my surface-thought which laughs. For 
that great procession of the unloved, who not only 
wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the 
locks of brown or gray, — under the snowy cap, under 
the chilling turban, — hide it even from themselves,^ — 
perhaps never know they wear it, though it kills 
them, — there is no depth of tenderness in my nature 
that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere, — some- 
where, — love is in store for them, — the universe must 
not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. What in- 
finity pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices 
by which unattractive young persons seek to recom- 
mend themselves to the favor of those towards whom 
our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are im- 
pelled by their God-given instincts ! 

Read what the singing- women — one to ten thou 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRKAKFAST-TABLE. 355 

Band of the suffering women — tell us, and think of 
the griefs that die unspoken ! Nature is in earnest 
when she makes a woman ; and there are women 
enough lying in the next churchyard with very com- 
monplace blue slate-stones at their head and feet, for 
whom it was just as true that "all sounds of life 
assumed one tone of love," as for Letitia Landon, 
of whom Elizabeth Browning said it ; but she could 
give words to her grief, and they could not. — Will 
yoQ hear a few stanzas of mine? 

THE VOICELESS. 

We count tlie broken lyres that rest 

"Where the sweet wailinjj sin;;ers slumber, — 
But o'er their silent sister's brea.st 

The wild flowers who will stoop to number ? 
A few can touch the magic string, 

And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; — 
Alas for those that never sing, 

But die with all their music in tkcm 1 

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone 

Whose song has told their hearts* sad story,— 
Weep for the voiceless, who have known 

The cross without the crown of glory 1 
Kot where Leucadian breezes sweep 

O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, 
But where the glistening night-tlews weep 

On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. 

O hearts that break and give no sign 
Save whitening lip and fading tresses, 



356 ^'ilE AUTOCKAr OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

Till Death po'^rs out his cordial Avlne 

Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses, — 

If siiiixins breath or echoinf; chord 
To every hidden pang were given, 

What landless melodies were poured, 
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven 1 

I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so badly 
off, after all. That young man from another city 
who made the remark which you remember about 
Boston State-house and Boston folks, has appeared 
at our table repeatedly of late, and has seemed to 
me rather attentive to this young lady. Only last 
evening I saw him leaning over her while she was 
playing the accordion, — indeed, I undertook to join 
them in a song, and got as far as " Come rest in this 
boo-oo," when, my voice getting tremulous, I turned 
off, as one steps out of a procession, and left the 
basso and soprano to finish it. I see no reason why 
this young woman should not be a very proper 
match for a man that laughs about Boston State- 
house. He can't be very particular. 

The young fellow whom I have so often men- 
tioned was a little free in his remarks, but very good- 
natured. — Sorry to have you go, — he said. — School- 
ma'am made a mistake not to wait for me. Haven't 
taken anything but mournin' fruit at breakfast since 

I heard of it. Mourning' fruity — said I, — what's 

that?- Huckleberries and blackberries, — said he; 

—couldn't eat in colors, raspberries, currants, and 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 357 

such, after a solemn thing like this happening. — The 
conceit seemed to please the young fellow. If you 
will believe it, when we came down to breakfast the 
next morning, he had carried it out as follows. You 
know those odious little "sails-plates" that figure 
so largely at boarding-houses, and especially at tav- 
erns, into which a strenuous attendant female trowels 
little dabs, sombre of tint and heterogeneous of com- 
position, which it makes you feel homesick to look 
at, and into which you poke the elastic coppery tea- 
spoon with the air of a cat dipping her foot into a 
wash-tub, — (not that I mean to say anyth'ng against 
them, for, when they are of tinted porcelain or starry 
many-faceted crystal, and hold clean bright berries, 
or pale virgin honey, or "lucent syrups tinct with 
cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of white silver, witii 
the Tower-stamp, solid, but not brutally heavy, — as 
people in the green stage of millionism will have 
them, — I can dally with their amber semi-fluids or 
glossy spherules without a shiver,) — you know these 
smr.ll, deep dishes, I say. When we came down the 
next morning, each of these (two only excepted) was 
covered with a broad leaf. On lifting this, each 
boarder found a small heap of solemn black huckle- 
berries. But one of those plates held red currants, 
and was covered with a red rose ; the other held 
white currants, and was covered with a white rose. 
There was a laugh at this at first, and then a short 
silence, and I noticed that her lip trembled, and the 



3,'8 THE AUTOCRAT OK THE BrvKAKFAST-TAIiLE. 

old gentleman opposite was in trouble to get at liia 
bandanna handkerchief. 

" What was the use in waiting ? We should 

be too late for Switzerland, that season, if we waited 
much longer." — The hand I held trembled in mine, 
and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther bowed herselt 
before the feet of Ahasuerus. — She had been reading 
that chapter, for she looked up, — if there was a film 
of moisture over her eyes there was also the faintest 
shadow of a distant smile skirting her lips, but not 
enough to accent the dimples, — and said, in her 
pretty, still way, — " If it please the king, and if I 
have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem 
right before the king, and I be pleasing in his 
eyes " 



I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or 
said when Esther got just to that point of her soft, 
humble words, — but I know what I did. That 
quotation from Scripture was cut short, anyhow. 
We came to a compromise on the great question, 
and the time was settled for the last day of summer. 

In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders, 
much as usual, as you may see by what I have re- 
ported. I must say, I was pleased with a certain 
tenderness they all showed toward us, after the first 
excitement of the news was over. It came out in 
trivial matters, — but each one, in his or her way, mani- 
fested kindness. Our landlady, for instance, when 
we had chickens, sent the liver instead of the giz- 



TFIE AUTOCRAT OF TIIK nnr.AKFAST-TAllLE. :;:,3 

zard, with tlie wing, for the schoohni stress. This 
was not an accident; the two are never mistaken, 
though some landladies appear as if they did not 
know the dilTerence. The whole of the company 
were even more respectfully attentive to my remarks 
than usual. There was no idle punning, and N'ery 
little winking on the part of that lively young gentle 
man who, as the reader may remember, occasionally 
interposed some playful question or remark, wh'uh 
could hardly be considered relevant, — except when 
the least allusion was made to matrimony, when he 
would look at the landlady's daughter, and wink 
with both sides of his face, until she would ask what 
he was pokin' his fun at her for, and if he wasn't 
ashamed of himself. In fact, they all behaved very 
handsomely, so that I really felt sorry at the thought 
of leaving my boarding-house. 

I suppose you think, that, because I lived at a 
plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course 
more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You 
may not be sorry to learn, that, though not what 
g-reat merchants call very rich, I was comfortable, — 
comfortable, — so that most of those moderate luxu- 
ries I described in my verses on Contentment — most 
of them, I say — were within our reach, if we chose to 
have them. But 1 found out that the schoolmistress 
had a vein of charity about her, which had hitherto 
been worked on a small silver and copper basis, 
whidi made her think less, perhaps, of luxuries 



ObO TriE AUTOCRAT OF TIIK BKEAKK AST-TADLE. 

than even I did, — modestly as I have expressec! 
my wishes. 

It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young 
woman, whom one has contrived to win without 
showing his rent-roll, that she has found what the 
world values so highly, in following the lead of her 
alfections. That was an enjoyment I was now 
ready for. 

I began abruptly : — Do you know that you are a 
rich young person ? 

I know that I am very rich, — she said. — Heaven 
has given me more than I ever asked; for I had not 
thought love was ever meant for me. 

It was a woman's confession, and her voice fell to 
a whisper as it threaded the last words. 

I don't mean that, — I said, — you blessed little 
saint and seraph I — if there's an angel missing in the 
New Jerusalem, inquire for her at this boarding- 
house I — I don't mean that I I mean that I — that is, 
you — am — are — confound it I — I mean that you'll 
be what most people call a lady of fortune. — And 1 
looked full in her eyes for the eflect of the announce- 
ment. 

There wasn't any. She said she was thankful 
that I had what would save me from drudgery, and 
that some other time I should tell her about it. — 1 
never made a greater failure in an attempt to pro- 
duce a sensation. 

So the last day of summer came. It was oui 



THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3G1 

choice to go to the church, but we had a kind ol 
reception at the boarding-house. The presents were 
all arranged, and among them none gave more plea- 
sure than the modest tributes of our fellow-boarders, 
— for there was not one, I believe, who did not send 
something. The landlady would insist on making 
an elegant bride-cake, with her own hands ; to wliich 
Master Benjamin Franklin wished to add certain 
embellishments out of his private funds, — namely, a 
Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, and 
two miniature flags with the stars and stripes, whicli 
had a very pleasing efFect, I assure you. The land- 
lady's daughter sent a richly bound copy of Tuppcr's 
Poems. On a blank leaf was the following, written 
in a very delicate and careful hand : — 

Presented to . . . by . . . 

On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony. 
May sunshine ever beam o'er her ! 

Even the poor relative thought she must do some- 
thing, and sent a copy of " The Whole Duty of 
Man," bound in very attractive variegated sheep- 
skin, the edges nicely marbled. From the divinity- 
student came the loveliest English edition ol 
" Keble's Christian Year." I opened it, when it 
came, to the Fourth Sunday in Lenty and read that 
angelic poem, sweeter than anything I can remem- 
ber since Xavier's " My God, I love thee." 1 am 

not a Churchman, — I don't believe in planting oaks 
in flower-pots, — but such a poem as " The Rose- 

16 



302 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAIiLE. 

bud " makes one's heart a proselyte to the culture il 
grows from. Talk about it as much as you like, — 
one's breeding shows itself nowhere moie than 
in his religion. A man should be a gentleman in 
his hymns and prayers ; the fondness for " scenes," 
among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly with 
that — 

" God only and good anfrels look 
Behind the blissful scene," — 

and that other, — 

" lie could not trust his meltinjr soul 
But in his Maker's sijiht," — 

that I hope some of them will see this, and read the 
poem, and profit by it. 

My laughing and winking young friend under- 
took to procure and arrange the flowers for the table, 
and did it with immense zeal. I never saw him 
look happier than when he came in, his hat saucily 
on one side, and a cheroot in his mouth, with a 
huge bunch of tea-roses, which he said were for 
" Madam." 

One o:' the last things that came was an old 
square box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed. 
It bore, in faded ink, the maiRs, " Calcutta, 1805." 
On opening it, we found a white Cashmere shawl, 
with a very brief note from the dear old gentleman 
opposite, saying that he had kept this some years, 
thinking he might want it, and many more, not 
knowing what to do with it,— that. he had never 



THE AUTOCRAT OF Till: BKEAJvl- AST-TABLE. ^(^^^ 

secMi it unfolded since he was a young supcrcar<To, 

and now, if she would spread it on her shoulders, it 
would make him feel young to look at it. 

Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of 
all work ! What must she do but buy a small copper 
breast-pin and put it under " Schoolma'am^s " plate 
that morning, at breakfast ? And Schoolma'am 
would wear it, — though I made her cover it, as well 
as I could, with a tea-rose. 

It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could 
not leave them in utter silence. 

Good-by, — I said, — my dear friends, one and all of 
you! I have been long with you, and I find it hard 
. parting. I have to thank you for a thousand courte- 
sies, and above all for the patience and indulgence 
with which you have listened to me when I have 
tried to instruct or amuse you. INIy friend the Pro- 
fessor (who, as well as my friend the Poet, is una- 
voidably absent on this interesting occasion) has 
given me reason to suppose that he would occupy 
ray empty chair about the first of January next. K 
he comes among you, be kind to him, as you have 
been to me. May the Lord bless you all ! — And we 
shook hands all round the table. 

Half acri'hour afterwards the breakfast things and 
the cloth were gone. I looked up and down the 
length of the bare boards over which I had so often 

uttered my sentiments and experiences — and 

Yes, I am a man, like another. 



3G4 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 

All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of theso old 
friends of mine, whom you know, and others a little 
more up in the world, perhaps, to whom 1 have not 
introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the 
altar from the hands of the old gentleman who used 
to sit opposite, and who would insist on giving her 
away. 

And now we two are walking the long path in 
peace together. The " schoolmistress " finds her 
skill in teaching called for again, without going 
abroad to seek little scholars. Those visions of 
mine have all come true. 

I hope you all love me none the less for anything 
I have told you. Farewell ! 



THE END. 






pBRABl 



INDEX. 



^aro^ 




Abusk, nil poml attempts get, 90. 

A'8TIVATU»N, 307. 

Afkimtiks and atitipntliies, 256. 

Age, softeninj; cfl'ects of, *Jl; begins 
when fire <r<>e.s down, 174; Koman 
ago of eidistmcnt, 174; its changes 
a string of insults, 177. 

A GOOD TIMK iJOlNG, 259. 

A IK- PUMP, animal under, 353. 

Album Veicsks, 17. 

Ai.rs, cMect of hjoking at, 311. 

Amkhican, the Knglishinan rein- 
forced, (a noted person thinks,) 
278. 

ANALociiKs, power of seeing, 93. 

ANATojkiisT's Hymn, The, 202. 

Anglo-Saxons ilio out in America, 
(Dr. Knox thinks,) 278. 

Anmveusakiks dreaded by the 

Professor, and why, 258. 
'AiUiL'MENTs, what arc tiiosc which 
spoil conversation, 11. 

AuisToruACY, the forming Ameri- 
can, 303; pluck the back-bono of, 
304. 

Aktists apt to act mechanically on 
their brains, 21(i. 

AssEssoKs, Heaven's, effect of meet- 
ing one of them, 104. 

Asylum, the, 288. 

Al'uienck, average intellect of, IGO; 
aspect of, 161; a compound verte- 
brate, 162. 

Audiences very nearly alike, 161; 
good feeling and intelligence of, 
163. 

Author does not hate anybody, 
255. 

AuTiioKs, iockeying of, 41; purr if 
skilfully handled, 55; ashamed of 
being tuiniy, 55; hate those who 
call them droll, 55 ; afcivays praise 
after fifty, 91. 

Automatic principles appear more 



prevalent the more we study, 95 j 
mental actions, 154. 
AvEKAGEs, their awful uniformity, 
161. 



B. 



BAniRs, old, 177. 

BACt)N, Lord, 317. 

Balzac, 172, 317. 

Beauties, vulgar, their virtuous in- 
dignation on being looked at, 226. 

Beliefs like ancient drinking- 
glasscs, 17. 

Beli^glass, young woman under, 
353. 

Benicia Boy, not challenged by thft 
Professor, and why, 199. 

Benjamin Fuanklin, the landla- 
dy's son, 14, 69, 64, 80, 97, 132, 
155, 156, 2.^7, 361. 

Behksimke, 274, 286, 310. 

Bekne, leap from the platform at, 
328. 

Blake, Mr., his Jesse Hural, 102. 

Blondes, two kinds of, 212. 

" Blooded " horses, 40. 

Boat, the Professor's own, descrip- 
tion of, 194. 

P><)ATiNG, the Professor describes 
his, i;.0. 

B«»ATs, the Professor's fleet of, 189. 

Books, hating, 69; society a strong 
-solution of, 70; the mind some- 
times feel -alxjvc them, 151; a 
man's and a woman's reafling,321. 

BoKEs, all men arc, except when we 
want them, 7. 

Boston, seven wise men of, their 
sayings, 142. 

Bowie-knife, the Roman gladius 
modified, 21. 

Brain, upper and lower stories of^ 
207; attempts to reach mechani- 
cally, 216. 

Brai2«s, seventy-year clocks, 214; 



3G6 



INDEX. 



contain inp^ ovarian eggs, how to 

know tlieni, 227. 
Bridget becomes a can^atid, 113; 

presents a breast-pin, 363. 
Bkowne, Sir Ihoraas, admirable 

sentiment of, 105. 
Bhowmno, Elizabeth, 355. 
Bkuce's Address, alteration of, 

52. 
BuLBous-iiEADED people, 7. 
BuNKKK-HiLL mouument, rocking 

of, 331. 
By HON, his line about striking the 

electrfc chain, 77. 



C. 



Cache, children make instinctively, 
237. 

Calamities, grow old rapidly in 
proportion to their ma<^nitude, 35; 
the recollection of returns after 
the first sleep as if new, 35. 

Calculating machine, 9; power, 
least hun an of qualities, 9. 

Call mim not oli*, 201. 

Camimjell, misquotation of, 79. 

Canaky-bihi), swimming move- 
ments of, 96. 

Cant terms, use of, 299. 

Caklyle, his article on Bos well, 

Cakpenter's bench. Author works 

at, 207. 
Chamuehs Street, 318. 
Chamouni, 311. 
Char,vctekistics, Carlyle's article, 

61. 
Charles Street, 318. 
Chaucer compared to an Easter- 

Beurr^, 92. 
CHEss-rLAYixo, couvcrsatiou com- 
pared to, 72. 
CiiiLUHEN, superstitious little 

wretches and sjiiritual cowards, 

237. 
Chloroform, Professor, the, under, 

341. 
Chkyso-aristocracy, our, the 

weak point in, 304. 
Cicero de Stucctute, Professor 

reads, 173; his treatise de Senec- 

tule, 180. 
Cincinnati, how not to pronounce, 

333. 
Circle?, intellectual, 310. 
CiTiEb, some of the smaller ones 



charming, 146; leaking of natnre 
into, 319. 

Cleroy rarely hear sermr ns, 31. 

Cli:h(;ymkn, their patients not al- 
ways truthful, 97. 

CivOCK of the Audover Seminarvi 
333. 

Cu)8ET full of sweet smells, 87. 

Clums, advantages of, 71. 

Coat, constnicted on d pnori 
grounds, 76. 

CoHH, Svlvanus, Jr. 18. 

Coffer," 287, 289. 

CoLi)-HLo()L»Ki> creatures, 149. 

CoLERiixiE, his remark on liter- 
arv mens' needing a profession, 
207. 

Coliseum, visit to, 327. 

Co.-MKT, the late, 26. 

Commencement day, like tlie start 
for the Derby, 107. 

Common sense, as we understand it, 
lt)l. 

Communications received by the 
Antlior, 334. 

Comi'any, the sad, 288. 

Con* EiT bred by little localized 
powers and narrow streaks of 
knowledge, 10; natural to the 
mind as a centre to a circle, 10; 
U'^es of, 10 ; makes people cheer- 
ful, 11. 

Constitution, American female, 
47; in choice of summer resi- 
dence, 309. 

Contentment, 312. 

Controversy, hydrostatic paradox 
of, 130. 

CoNUNDHUMs indulged in by the 
company, 293; rebuked by the 
Author," 294. 

CoN-VERSATioN, Very serious mat- 
ter, 6; with some persons weaken- 
ing, 6; great faults of, 11; spoiled 
by certain kinds of argument, 11; 
a code of finalities necessary to, 
12; compared to Italian game of 
nun'a, 17; shapes our thoughts, 
30 ; i5/a/r-ing of re, ' 44 ; one 

of the fine art<, 57; couipared to 
chess-i)laying, 72 ; depends on how 
much is taken for granted, 72; of 
Lecturers, 73. 

CooKESoN, William, of All-Souls' 
College, 98. 

Copley, his portrait of the rae^ 
chant-uncle, 23; of the great« 
grandmother, 23. 



INDEX. 



367 



■* Correspondent, our Foreign," 
133. 

Counterparts of people in many 
difrereiit cities, 159. 

Cowi'EK, 213; hi* lines on his moth- 
er's portmit, 32l<; his lines on the 
" Roviil CJeorcre," 329. 

Creko", the .Author's, 100. 

Ckinoi.ine, (Jtaheitan, 21. 

Ck«>nv jind kiiip-binl, 32. 

CuKi^, flat circular on temples, 20. 



D. 



Dandies, uses of, 300; illustrious 
ones, 301, 302; men are horn, 302. 

DAViDhoN, Lucretia and Margaret, 
213. 

DEAroN's MASTERPtErE, TuE, 295. 

Death as a form of rhetoric, 152; 

introduction to, 243. 
Dkkkkield, elm in, 334. 
Den i/tij, woman struck dead at, 

329. 
Dkjhton Rock, inscription on, 287. 
DiMKNsioNs, three of solids, hand- 
ling idejus as if they had, 95. 
Divinity, doctors of, many people 

q\uilitied to be, 32. 
Divinity Stidknt, the, 1, 47, 03, 

94, 97, 100, 114, 125, 142, 143, 151, 

15.5, 211, 217, 223, 22S, 23G, 256, 

267, 268, 293, 301, 306, 361. 
DocToK, old, his catalogue of books 

for light reading, Ibl. 
Di:iN king-glasses, ancient, beliefs 

like, 17. 
DiuiLL, authors dislike to be called, 

65. 
Drunkenness often a punishment, 

220. 
Dull persons great comforts at 

times, 6; happiness of finding we 

are, 69. 



E. 



Ears, vol _' movement of, 10. 

Earth, n«»t ripe yet, 26. 

EAKiiiyUAKE, to" launch Leviathan, 
80. 

EnLis, hall of, 288. 

Editors, appeals tj their benevo- 
lence, 340; must get calluses, 341. 

Education, professional, most of 
our people have had, 31. 

Eggs, Ovarian, intellectual, 226. 



Elm, American, 271; the groat 
Johnston, 272; HatfioKl, 274 ; Slief- 
fieiil, 274; West S|)ringru'l.i, 274; 
Tittsficld, 275; Newbury port, 275; 
Cohasset, 275; English anil Amer- 
ican, comparison of, 277. 

El.ms, Sj)ringfield, 273; first class, 
274; second class, 275: Mr. Pad- 
dock's row of, 278; in .\ndover, 
332, 335; in Norwich, 333; in Door- 
field, 335; in Lancaster, two very 
large ones. See Lancaster. 

Emotions strike us ol)li«inoly, 327. 

Epitiikts follow isothornial liiies, 
130. 

Erasmu.s colloquies of, 98; naufni- 
gium or shipwrock of, 98. 

Ehkctilk heads, lucu of genius 
witli, 7. 

Essays, diluted, 74. 

Essex Stivet, 318. 

Esther, Queen, and Ahasnems, 368. 

Eteicnity, remembering one's self 
in, 233. 

Everlasting, the herb, its sugges- 
tions, 85. 

Exercise, scientifically examined, 
193. 

Ex PEDE Hekculem, 124. 

Exi'EKiKNCE, a solemn fowl; her 
eggs, 317. 

Experts in crime and suffering, ^7. 



F. 



Faces, negative, 162. 

Fact.s, horror of generous minds for 

what are cf)tnnionly called, 5; the 

brute beasts of the intelligence, 5; 

men of, 164. 
Family, man of, 23. 
Fancies, youthful, 312. 
FahkwklI., the .Author's, 364. 
Fault found with every thing worth 

saying, 127. 
Feeling that we have been in the 

same coiulition before, 81; modes 

of exj)Iaining it, 82, H3. 
FEELiNrjs, every person's, have a 

front-door and a side-<loor, 147. 
Fifty cents, a figure of rhefc:ric, 

306. 
Flash phraseology, 299. 
Flavor, nothing knows its own, 61 
Fleet of our ctjmpanions, 106. 
FixnvERS, why poets talk so much 

of, 266. 



3C8 



INDEX. 



Franklin-place, front-yards in, 

318. 
FnKNCii exercise, Benj. Franklin's, 

64, 156. 
Friends, shown up by story-tellers, 

68. 
Friendship does not authorize one 

to say disagreeable thiii{;s. 
Front-duok and side-door to our 

feelings, 147. 
Fruit, green, intellectnal, those 

United States a great mai'ket fur, 

805; mourning, 356. 
Fuel, carbon and bread and checso 

are equally, 179. 
Funny, auiliors jvshamed of being, 

65. 
" Fust-rate " and other vulgarism, 

81. 



G. 



Gkese for swans, .319. 

Genius, a weak flavor of, 8; the ad- 
vent of, a surprise, 61. 

GiKT-ENTEKPKisEs, Nature's, 61. 

OiLiiKUT, the French poet, 213. 

Gil IJlas, the archbishop served 
him right, 56; motto from, 230. 

GiLi'iN, l)addy, 270. 

GiKLii' story in " Book of Mart^-rs," 
354; two young, their fall from 
gallery, '.117. 

Giz/AUD and Liver never con- 
founded, 359. 

GiH»D-nv, the Author's, 363. 

Grammar, higher law in, 43. 

Gravestones, transplanting of, 
279. 

Green fniit, intellectual, 305. 

Gkound-bait, literar}', 41. 



H. 



Habit, what its essence is, 179. 
Hand, the gi'oat wooden, 328. 
"HaowV" whether final, 125. 
Hat, the old gentleman opposite's 

white, 204; the author's youthful 

Leghorn, 205. 
Hats, aphorisms concerning, 206. 
Heakts, inscriprions on, 2b7. 
Heresy, burning for, experts in, 

would be found in any large city, 

87. 
Historian, the quotation from, on 

pumiiug, 14. 



Honey, emptying the jug of, 20. 

Houses, what they feed on, 192. 

HosriTALiTY depends on latitude 
350. 

Hot day, sounds of, 350. 

JIutil (le r Uiiicers el ties Eiats Uni$^ 
144. 

H<»i;sATONic, the Professor's dwell- 
ing by, 285. 

HtK'sEs, dying out of, 281; killed by 
conunercial smashes, 281; shape 
themselves upon our natures, 282. 

House, the body we live in, 281; 
Irishman's at Cambriilgeport, 22. 

HouYNiiNM (Jazette, 265. 

HucKLEHEiiRiEs, hail-storm of, 268. 

Hull, how Pope's line is fead therci, 
147. 

HiMA, story of, 8. 

Humanities, cumulative, 25. 

Hya<inth, blue, 266, 267. 

Hysterics, 101. 



I. 



Ice in wine-glass, tinkling like cow- 
bells, b7. 

Ideas, age of, in our memories, 35; 
handling them tvs if they had the 
three dimensions of solids, 95. 

iMroNUERAULKs move the world, 
156. 

Imi'komptus, 18. 

In ME kited traits show very early, 
226. 

Insanity, the logic of an accurate 
mind overtjisked, 46; becomes a 
dutv under certain circumstances, 
47." 

Instincts, cnishinfij out of, 353. 

Lnte.mperance, the Author dis- 
courses of, 217. 

Intermittent, poetical, 289. 

Inventive Power, economically 
used, 277. 

Iris, cut the vellow hair, 79. 

Irishman's liouse at Cambridge- 
port, 22. 

Island, the, 43. 



J. 



Jailers and xmdertakers magnet izt 

people, 36. 
Jaundice, as a token of affection, 

152. 



INDEX. 



3G9 



/oiix anfl Thomas, their dialogue of 

SIX poiNoiis, n\i. 
John, the vomiff fellow called, 60, 

72, SI, 88," 114, 12N 201, 21G, 223, 

224, 241, 254, 268, 2y3, 300, 306, 

356, 362. 
Joiinskn, Dr., his remark on at- 

ticks, 12H; lines to 1 hnile, 174. 
Juim;mknt, standard of, how to e»- 

tubli.-h, 16. 



K. 



Kfats, 213. 

Kkiw.k, his poem, 301, 

•* Kkickiixjk," and otiier character- 
istic expressions, 124. 

KiKKK W iirrE, 214. 

K.Nowi.KiniK, little streaks of spe- 
cialized, breed conceit, 10. 

Knuklks, marks of on broken 
ghuis, 123. 



L. 



Lai>y. the real, not sensitive if looked 

at, 225. 
Lai)Y-B«>aiipkii, the, with auto- 

pniph-l)ook, 6. 
I.A.NULADY, 68, 88, 122, 352, 361. 
La.M)Lai>y's daii>;hter, 18, 20, 63, 

168, 159, 257, 26H, 356, 361. 
Lattkh-day Wahm.nos, 26. 
Lal(;iitkr and tears, wind and 

water-power, 101. 
Lectl'kkks, prooves in their minds, 

73; talkin;? in streaks out of their 

lectures, 73; pet homesick, 163; 

attacks upon, 351. 
LEcri;KKs, feelinps connected with 

their <lelivery, 159; popular, what 
«they should" have, 160; old, 160; 

what they ouplit to be, 161. 
Leibnitz, remark of, 1. 
Lts S(KU'(cs J'ulyj)hysiophUo»ophiqii€S, 

156. 
Letfer to an ambitious young man, 

335. 
Le'ITKiss with various requests, 78. 
Leviathan, launch of, bO. 
Life, experience of, 32; compared 

to transcript of it, 66; compared 

*o books, 154; divisible into fifteen 

periods, 177 ; early, revelations 

conceniing, 234; its experiences, 

322. 
L1L.VC leaf-buds, 265, 267. 
Liu>', the leaden one at Alnwick, 328. 

24 



LisTON thought himself a tragio 
actor, 103. ^ 

LiTKKAKY pickpockets, 57. 

LiviNti Temple. Ihe, 2(>2. 

L(K HiEL rocked in cradle when old, 
92. 

Log, using old schoolmates ai, to 
mark our rate of sailing, 105. 

LociicAL minds, what they vlo, 15. 

LoMi path, the, 352; walking to- 
gether, 364. 

Landkn, Let'tia, 355. 

L<»VE-CAPA(ITY, 316. 

Love, introduction to, 244; its rela 
tive s()liil)ility in the speech of mea 
and women, 317. 

Lri>i<i{tn-s, a divine idea, 104. 

LiNivEHsAKY, return of, 54. 

Lyicic conception hits like a bullet, 
111. 



M. 



ilACAULAY-rLowERs of Literature, 
15. 

"Maoazink, Northern," got up by 
the *' Coine-()utei*8," 137. 

Maine, willows in, 336. 

.Man of family, 23. 

Mai% photograph of, on the wall, 288. 

Ma ICE KriiRi-M, 140. 

MAKKiOLi), ils suggestions, 84. 

Mather, Cotton, 75, 346. 

Mkerschai'.ms and poems must be 
kei)t and used, 1 15, 117. 

Men, self-made, 22; all, love all wo- 
men, 257. 

Mcs'illiitncey dreadful consequences 
of, 250. 

Midi^le-aoed female, takes oITence, 
33. 

MiLLioxisM, green stage of, 357. 

Mm.ton compared to a Saint Ger- 
main-pear, etc., 92. 

Mind, automatic actions of, 154, 

Minds, chussification of, 1; jerky 
ones fatiguing, 6; logical, what 
they do, 15; calm and clear best 
basis for love and friendship, 160; 
saturation-point of, 153. 

Minister, my oM, his remarks on 
want of attention, 33. 

Mi.sERY, a great one puts a new 
stamp on us, 36. 

AIisfortU-NE, professional dealers in, 
36. 

Misprints, 54. 

MoLuVssES, Melasses, or Molossa's 78* 



370 



INDEX. 



Mora, Italian game of conversation 

compared to, 17. 
MoKALisT, the great, quotation from 

on punning, 14. 
Mountains and sea, 308. 
^loUKNiNG fruit, 356. 
Muo the bitten, 232. 
MuKiiinuiTY and femineity in voice, 

251. 
MusA, 290. 

Muscular powers, when they de- 
cline, 18. 
Muse, the, 290. 

Musicians, odd movements of, 95. 
Music, its effects ditferent from 

thought, 152. 
Mutual Admiration, Societj'- of, 2. 
Mr Lady's Cheek, (verse,) 177. 
Myrtle Street, discovered by the 

Professor, 191 ; description of, 191; 

garden in, 318. 



■N. 



Nahant, 310. 

Nature, Amen of, 266, leaking of, 

into cities, 319. 
Nautilus, The Chambered, 110. 
Nerve-playing, masters of, 148. 
Nerve-tapping, 6. 
Nerve, olfactory, connection of, 

with brain, 85. 
Newton, his speech about the child 

and tlie pebbles, 94. 
Norwich, elms in, 333; how not to 

pronounce, 333. 
Novel, one, everybody has stuff 

for, 66 ; why I do not write, 66. 



0. 



Oak, its one mark of supremacy, 

270. 
Ocean, the, two men walking by, 

93. 
Old Age, starting point of, 174; al- 
legory of 175; approach of, 176; 

habits the great mark of, 178; 

how nature cheats us into, ib.; 

in the Professor's contemporaries, 

185; remedies for, 188; excellent 

remedy for, 200. 
3ld Gentleman opposite, the, 2, 

59, 68, 97, 112, 201, 204, 206, 228, 

242, 244, 362, 364. 
Old Max, a person startled when 



he first hears himself called sO; 
178. 

Old Men, always poets if they evei 
have been, 114. 

Omens, of childhood, 238. 

One-hoss-siiay, The Wonderfui^ 
295. 

" Our Sumatra Correspond- 
ence," 134. 



P. 



Pail, the white pine, of water, 232. 

Parallelism, without identity, in 
oriental and occidental nature, 
277. 

Parentheses, dismount the reader, 
204. 

Parson Turelt/s Legacy, 345. 

Path, the long, 323. 

Pears, men are like, in coming to 
maturity, 92. 

Phosphorus, its suggestions, 84. 

Photographs of the Past, 283. 

Phrases, complimentary, applied 
to authors, what determines them, 
131. 

Pie, the young fellow treats disre- 
spectfully, 88 ; the Author takes 
too large a piece of, 90. 

Piecrust, poems, etc., written un- 
der influence of, 90. 

Pillar, the Hangman's, 329. 

PiNKNEY, William, 7. 

Pirates, Danish, their skins on 
church doors, 121. 

Plagiarism, Author's virtuous dis- 
gust for, 168. 

PoCKET-nooK fever, 240. 

Poem — with the slif/ht alterations, 53. 

Poems, alterations of, 52; have a 
body and a soul, 112; green state 
of, 114; porous like meerschaums, 
117; post-prandial, the Professor's 
idea of, 259. 

Poet, mv friend, the, 111, 146, 200, 
206 et seq., 211, 258, 259, 261. 

Poets love verses while warm from 
their minds, 114; two kinds of, 
212; apt to act mechanically on 
their brains, 216. 

Poets and artists, why like to be 
prone to abuse of stimulants, 221. 

Poetaster who has tasted type, 
340. 

Poetical impulse external, 112. 

Poetry uses white light for ita 
main object, 56. 



IXDEX. 



371 



PoT,isn lance, 22. 

i*ooi! relation in black bombazine, 
33, 97, 114, 241, 306, 3G1. 

r<»FLAH, murder of one, 271. 

Poitr-ciiucK, his vivacious sally, 
205. 

PoKTSMOUTH, how not to pronounce, 
333. 

Powers, little localized, breed con- 
ceit, 10. 

Pkeachkk, dull, might lapse into 
gtiitsl heathenism, 31. 

'■ Pkklude," the Professor's, 343. 

PuENTiss, Dame, 232. 

I'liiDE in a woman, 316. 

Pkince Rupert's drops of literatm'e, 
42. 

Pkincii'EE, against obvious facts, 63. 

P HIV ATE Journal, extract from mv, 
287. 

PnivATE theatricals, 47. 

Probabilities provided with buf- 
fers, 63. 

Pi{oFEssK>N, literary men should 
have a, 207. 

Pkofess<jk, my friend the, 28, 80, 
90, 101, 123, 130, 137, 170, 171 et 
seq., 201, 206 et seq., 224, 226, 227, 
262, 281 et seq., 294, 341 et seq. 

Prologue, 49. 

Public Garden, 318. 

Pugilists, when "stale," 180. 

Punning, quotations respecting, 14. 

Puns, law respecting, 12; what they 
consist in, 55; surrepti<^iously cir- 
culated among the company, 293. 

Pupil of the eye, simile concerning, 
the Author disgorges, 166. 



Q. 



Quantity, false, Sidney Smith's re- 
mark on, 125. 



R. 



Race of life, the, report of running 

in, 108. 
Races, our sympathies go naturally 

with higher, 74. 
Racing, not republican, 38. 
Raphael and Michael Angelo, 237. 
r'Asi-AiL's proof-sheets, 28. 
^at des Snhms a Lecture, 65. 
Reading for the sake of talking, 

154; a man's and a woman's, 321. 



Recollections, trivial, essential ta 

our identity, 243. 
Relatives, opinions of as to a 

man's powers, 60. 
Repeating one's self, 7. 
Reputation, living on contingent, 

68. 
Reputations, conventional, 41. 
"Retiking" at night, etiquette of, 

241. 
Rhode-Island, near what place, 

272. 
Rhymes, old, we get tired of, 20; 

bad to chew upon, 338. 
Ridiculous, love of, dangerous to 

literary men, 102. 
RosKs, damask, 264, 267. 
Rowing, nearest approach to flying, 

195; its excellencies, ib.; its joys, 

196. 
" Royal George," the, Cowper's 

poem on, 329. 
Rum, the term applied by low peo- 
ple to noble fluids, 220. 



Saas-plates, 357. 

Saddle-leather compared to sole- 
leather, 192. 

" Sahtisfahction," a tepid ex- 
pression, 120. 

Saint Genevieve, visit to church of, 
327. 

' Saints and their Bodies," an ad- 
mirable Kssay, 189. 

Santokini's laughing-muscle, 224. 

Saving one's thoughts, 29. 

Schoolmistress, the, 35, 47, 68, 85, 
86, 97, 122, 133, 142, 143, 156, 211, 
212, 234 et seq., 242, 244 et seq., 
264, 278, 286 et seq., 311, 358 et 
seq. 364. 

" Science," the Professor's inward 
smile at her airs, 206. 

Scientific certainty has no spring 
in it, 63. 

Scientific knowledge partakes c€ 
insolence, 62. 

Scraping the floor, eff*ect of, 56. 

Sea and Mountains, 308. 

Seed capsule (of po-^rns,) 232. 

Self-detekminino power, limita 
tion of, 100. 

Self-esteem, with good ground is 
imposing, 11. 

Self-made men, 22 



372 



INDEX. 



Sermon, proposed, of the Author, 

97. 
Skkmons, feeble, hard to Ustea to, 

but iiiiiy act inductively, 32. 
Skntfaiknts, all splashed and 

streaked with, 267. 
Sevkn Wise Men of Boston, their 

sayinj^s, 142. 
SiiAKsi'EAHK, old copy, Avith flakes 

of pie-crust between its leaves, 88. 
Shawl, the Indian blanket, 21. 
SnoiiTKNi.Nti weapons and lengthen- 
ing boundaries, 22. 
Siiir, the, and martin-house, 240. 
Ships, afraid of, 238. 
Shop-blijsus, iron, produce a shiver, 

312. 
SiEKUA Leone, native of, enjoying 

himself, 351. 
SiOHT, pretemled failure of, in old 

persons, 199. 
Similitude and analogies, ocean of, 

94. 
Sin, its tools and their handle, 142; 

introduction to, 243. 
Smell, as connected with the mem- 
ory, etc. 83. 
Smile, the terrible, 223. 
Smith, Sidney, abused by London 

Quarterly Review, 103. 
Sneaking* fellows to be regarded 

tenderly, 255. 
Societies of mutual admiration, 2. 
y Soul, its concentric envelops, 281. 
y Sounds, suggestive ones, 246, 247. 
.Spakking, tho! Professor sees a little, 

and describe.-; it, 198. 
Si'oKEN language plastic, 30. 
SroKTiNG men, virtues of, 41. 

SpKING HAS COME, 228. 

Squiuming when old falsehoods are 

turned over, 129. 
Stagic-Kuffian, the, 58. 
" Stars, the, and the earth," a little 

book, referred to, 310. 
State House, Boston, the hub of 

the solar system, 143. 
'* Statoo of deceased infant," 124. 
Stillicidium, sentimental, 89. 
Stone, flat, turning over of, 127. 
Stranger, who came with young 

fellow called John, 143, 356. 
"Strap!" my man John's story, 

121. 
Strasburg Cathedral, rocking of its 

spire, 331. 
Stkiklng in of thoughts and feel- 
ings, 153. 



Stuart, his two portraits, 21. 
Summer residence, choice of, 309. 
Sun and Shadow, 45. 
Sunday mornings, how the Autb^ 

shows his respect for, 201. 
Swans, taking his (huks for, 319. 
Swift, pro[)erty restored to, 168. 
Swords, Roman and American, 21. 

SvLVA NoVANGLlCA, 275. 

Syntax, Dr. 270. 



T. 



Talent, a little makes people jeal- 
ous, 2. 

Talkers, real, 164. 

Talking like playing at a mark 
Avith an engine, 30; one of the 
fine arts, 58. 

Teapot, literary, 70. 

The last Blossom, 186. 

The old Man Dreams, 76. 

The two Armies, 262. 

The Voiceless, 355. 

Theological students, we all are, 
32. 

Thought revolves in cycles, 80; if 
uttered, is a kind of excretion, 227. 

Thoughts may be original, though 
often before uttnred, 8; saving, 
29; shaped in conversation, 30; 
tell worst to minister and best to 
young people, 3o; my best seem 
always old, 34; real,' knock out 
somebody's wind, 129. 

TlIoUGHT-tsPRINKLKRS, 30. 

Time and space, 310. 

Tobacco-stain may strike into 
character, 116. 

Tobacco-stopper, lovely one, 116. 

Towns, small, not more modest than 
cities, 144. 

Toy', author carves a wonderful at 
Marseilles, 208. 

Toys moved by sand, caution from 
one, 90. 

Travel, maxims relating to, 325; 
recollections of, 326. 

Tree, growth of, as shown by rings 
of wood, 331 ; slice of a hemlock, 
331; its growth compai'ed to hu- 
man lives, 332. 

Trees, great, 268; mother-idea in 
^ach kind of, 270; afraid of meas- 
uring-tape, 272; Mr. Emerson's 
report on, 273; of America, oui 
friend's interesting work on, 276. 



INDEX. 



373 



Tree-wives, 26S. 

Triads, writing in, 95. 

Trois Fr^res, dinners at the, 86. 

Trotti>-g, democratic and favora- 
ble to many virtues, 40 ; matches 
not races, 40. 

Truth, primary relations with, 16. 
y Truths and lies compared to cubes 
and splieres, 132. 

TUPPER, 18, 361. 

TuppERiAN wisdom, 317. 

Tutor, my late Latin, his verses, 
307. 



U 



Unloved, the, 354. 



V. 

Veneering in conversation, 164. 

V'eksk, proper medium for revealing 
our secrets, 67. 

Verses, album, 17; abstinence from 
writing, the mark of a poet, 233. 

Verse-writers, their peculiarities. 
338. ' 

Vu»LiNs, soaked in music, 117; take 
a century to dry, 118. 

Virtues, negative, 306. 

VisiT»»Rs, getting rid of, when their 
visit is over, 19 

Voice, the Teutonic maiden's, 250; 
the German woman's, 251; the 
little child's in the hospital, 252. 

Voices, certain female, 248; fear- 
fully sweet ones, 249; hard and 
sharp, 251; people do not know 
their own, 253; sweet must be- 
long to good spirits, 253. 

Voltur, brand of, on galley rogues, 

Volume, man of one, 165. 



W. 

Walking ai-ra against arm, 20; laws 
of, 80 ; the Professor sanctions, 
191 ; riding, and rowing compared, 
19,3, 194. ' 

Wasp, sloop of war, 239. 

Watch-paper, the old gentleman's. 
244. ' 



Water, the white-pine pail of, 232. 

Wkdding, tlie, .304. 

Wedding-prksknts, the, 361. 

Wellington, gentle iu his old age, 
92. 

What we all think, 168. 

Will, compared to a drop of water 
in a crystal, 96. 

Willows in Maine, 335. 

"Wine of ancients, 75. 

"Wit takes imperfect views of things, 
65. 

Woman, an excellent instrument for 
a nerve-phi yer, 148; to love a, 
must see her through a pin-hole, 
258; must be true as deatli, 315; 
marks of low and bad blood in, 
316; love-capacity in, ib.; pride 
in, 316; why she should not say 
too much, 317. 

Wo.VEN, young, advice to, 54; first 
to detect a poet, 211; inspire poets, 
211; their praise tlie poet's re- 
ward, 211; all, love all men, 257; 
all men love all, 257; pictures of, 
2')7; who have weighed all that 
life can offer, 322. 

W(M>DBRiDoK, Benjamin, his grave, 

279, 2^0. 
World, old and new, comparison 
of their types of organization, 
276. 
Writing with feet in hot water, 7; 
like shooting with a rifle, 30 



Y. 



Yes? in conversation, 20. 

Young Fellow called .John, 60, 72, 

81, 88, 114, 128, 201, 216, 223, 224, 

241, 254, 268, 293, 800, 306, 356, 

362. 
Young Lady come to be finished 

off, 10. 
Youth, flakes off" like button-wood 

bark, 177; American, not perfect 

type of physical humanity, 197; 

and age, what Author 

231. ^ 



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